A broken voice crackles in her headset. “Crossing mer— … —erily.”
“Say again, Homunculus.”
“—ossing meridian momen—y.”
“Copy. Hunter, there’s a lot of static.”
“We’re —ing interference, too.”
“Keep in contact.”
“Roger th—.”
Their passage through the horizon is obvious when it happens. And it nearly kills her.
The Homunculus takes a hit of intense sunlight. The propulsion jets burn white hot. Though black, the surface is mildly reflective. It scatters the energy that lands upon it. Lana sees a white flash in her left eye, then nothing. An alarm bleats inside her suit. On reflex, she jets backwards. Her boots come free of the hull and she drifts back by the ship’s bow.
She’s been hit, she realizes.
Hit by what?
The left side of her faceplate has been blacked out. Maybe burned. She reaches up to touch it, can’t feel anything through her gloves. Her face feels hot and stiff from her forehead to her left nostril. She blinks, waves her hands in front of herself, turns her head frantically side to side, but the blackness remains to her left.
Oh no.
It’s not the faceplate. A sunbeam has ruined her left eye.
This must be how all those wounded soldiers felt during battle, before they were carried out and brought to her crying. When something hit them and they tried to stand but found their legs useless or their guts hanging out or their lower jaws missing. It must have dawned on them slowly, just like this. The battle would go on, not pausing to regard their injuries. How hard must they have fought not to panic, like she fights now, wondering why Jack and the others are not responding to her calls.
Alarms blare and warning lights pulse. The calm male voice Jack now recognizes as the Homunculus’s AI unleashes a string of syllables he cannot make sense of. Gregorian attempts to translate, fumbles for the words.
Jack barks: “Make this thing speak English!”
Gregorian changes the babble to Jack’s native tongue. The list of damages just keeps on growing: “Rupture in exhaust ports 11, 18, 22, 29, 30, thrusters unresponsive, grav drive offline, coolant leak in main thruster 2, atmosphere regulators offline, magshield controls offline…”
“Turn that shit off!”
The AI goes silent.
“Get us into shade. Now.”
“I’m trying!” Hunter says. “She’s not responding!”
“Run diagnostics. Reboot if we have to.”
“Rebooting now.”
The lights go dim and red. With the gravity offline, Jack floats up from his chair. The ship jolts forward and his seatback hits him from behind, sending him spinning toward the ceiling. “Christ!” He clamors back into place. A moment later the lights and gravity come back on. He settles into his seat. “Report.”
She reads from her screen. “Minor damage. Systems functional. She’s putting out some fires, but we’re alright. Jesus fuck, that was not okay.”
“Call Lana.”
Hunter tries. There’s no response.
Chapter 57
When she’s certain their shielding is back up and they are safe from the light, she lands on the hull and walks carefully back to the cannon. She is so lost in anxiety, half-blind, worrying why the others haven’t responded, that the sight of the hydra running toward her hardly registers. It tumbles like a ball of yarn, tall and wide as a house.
She leaps, blasting her thrusters. She falls through blackness, away from the ship. Fifty feet. A hundred. One-fifty. With her back turned, there’s no way to tell if it has leapt after her. No way to hear it coming. Just that tingle on her scalp that lets her know it is inches behind, reaching. When that sensation fades, she brakes and turns.
Before her in the emptiness of space, the hydra sways, a long strand of seaweed. It snaps at her like a snake with its tail nailed down.
“—ou read?” Hunter’s voice.
“Hunter, are you there?”
“Thank the fucking stars. Comms are back up.”
“I’ve got the hydra. Fire. Fire now.”
A blue ball flashes too far to port, a miss she anticipated.
She calls out the adjustment.
The second shot is a miss, too, but not as wide.
She adjusts by two degrees.
All the while, the hydra waggles and snaps.
The third shot splashes a white flare at the base of the hydra’s trunk.
The stalk rotates away from her, the snake’s tail tugged sideways. Free from the hull, both ends travel toward their center. It bulges into an oval like a water droplet in Zero-G, ridges rippling along its surface, so many tongues flicking at nothing.
“Direct hit!”
Their celebration on the bridge hisses through as static.
One good blast from the cannon should send the hydra soaring off. Yet something is wrong. The hairs on her neck stand at attention. She feels watched. Targeted. From behind.
With a twist of her controls, she turns in time to see an enormous pale insect falling out of the darkness, crooked limbs reaching to embrace her.
The hydra from the panic pod.
She spins, shuttles out of its path.
Too slow.
An appendage hits her from the side but can’t get a grip. It’s a glancing blow that throws her into a violent spiral. Vapor whirls and the alarm in her helmet returns. The EM-pack won’t respond. She spins right to left, the Homunculus flashing past again and again and again, smaller now, farther. Either her thrusters or her air tank has ruptured.
Corner of her eye: the pod hydra splashes into the first. Its momentum sends both creatures rolling back to the Homunculus.
Lana tumbles, fighting her controls, nearing the edge of the magshield and oblivion.
Chapter 58
“What the hell was that?”
They all felt it. A sudden vibration in the hull, a collision.
“Lana?” Jack tries her on comms.
A wash of static in response.
Hunter pulls her hands from her screen as if burned. “We lost her.”
“What do you mean lost her? Where’d she go?”
Hear now the ratta-tat-tat of the hydra scrambling over the hull.
“I don’t know. The signal’s gone.”
This cannot be happening.
“Find it!”
“Too much interference. It’s like she vanished.”
“She didn’t vanish!” He limps out of his chair. Every muscle protesting. He never should have let her leave.
“Jack!” Hunter calls.
“I’m going out there!”
The spinning does not stop. If it were her air tank, she’d have suffocated by now. The rupture punched through the left side of her EM-pack at a forward angle, very near her torso. No air comes out. The pack is empty. The controls dead. She feels nauseous. Going to pass out. Everything turning turning turning.