The deeper he went down the hall, the thinner the crowd became. With more room to move around, Victor began launching himself forward, moving faster, covering more ground. He reached Abuelita, his great-grandmother, who was being helped down the hall by two of his uncles. “Where’s Isabella?”
They pointed farther up the hall. Victor shot forward, panicked. There were very few people now. What if Isabella had gone into someone’s room to help them and Victor had passed it? Or what if she had taken another passageway down to the fuge and Victor had missed her?
He saw her. She was ahead in the hall, putting Victor’s cousin Nanita’s arm in a sling.
“Isabella!”
She looked up. Victor grabbed a handhold on the wall, stopped himself, and motioned for her to come. “It’s Marco. He’s not breathing.”
She grabbed her bag and launched toward him. “Where?”
Victor turned his body and launched down the way he had come. “Airlock. Cargo bay.”
“He was outside?”
“We were putting on some plates when the corporates attacked.”
“Corporates?”
He told her what he could as they flew down the corridor. He had to shout over the wail of the alarm. The crowd was thin now. Most people would be in the fuge. They reached the cargo bay. Isabella went through first. They flew down to the airlock. Maybe Marco is fine now, thought Victor. Maybe Father revived him. We’ll get there, and Marco will be up and coughing and sore maybe, but he’ll be alive, and he’ll thank Father and me for helping him, and then we’ll all go down to the fuge together and laugh about what a scare it had been.
But Marco wasn’t fine. Father was still giving him rescue breaths. Nothing had changed. Marco was still lifeless. Father saw them and moved aside for Isabella to take over. Father looked exhausted and afraid and out of breath. “He’s not responding to anything,” he said.
Isabella slid her greaves up to her knees and knelt on the floor beside Marco, opening her bag and moving quickly. “Help me get his suit off so I can get to his chest.” She had scissors in her hand and began cutting away his suit. Victor and Father tore the fabric away as Isabella cut through Marco’s undershirt. Victor watched the chest, willing it to rise on its own, to move, to show a little life. It didn’t.
Isabella slapped sensors onto his chest and slid a tube over Marco’s mouth. The machine started giving him breaths, and Marco’s chest began to rise and fall. It didn’t give Victor any comfort. The machine was doing all the work. Isabella pulled a syringe from her bag, bit off the needle cap, spat it away, and stuck the needle into Marco’s arm. She flipped on a second machine, and Victor heard the sustained beep of a flatline. His heart wasn’t beating. Isabella pressed a disc to Marco’s chest. She squeezed the handle, and Marco’s body twitched. Victor thought for half a second that whatever Isabella had done had revived him; that Marco was coming around and jerking awake. But he wasn’t. His body became still again. Isabella jolted him three more times. Four. Still the flatline persisted.
Isabella looked lost. She removed the disc from Marco’s chest and pushed it away. Her hands went back in her bag. They came out with the bone pad. She placed it on Marco’s chest, and the skeletal structure appeared on the screen. Isabella slowly moved the pad up to Marco’s neck and held it there for a long time, her face just inches from the pad. Finally, she switched off the pad and looked up, defeated.
“His neck is broken. It severed his spinal column. I’m sorry.”
The words felt hollow to Victor, like words from a dream. She was telling them that Marco was dead, that there was nothing more she could do. She was giving up.
No, Marco couldn’t be dead. Victor had been with Marco just moments ago. They had been working together, laughing.
Father was speaking quietly into his handheld, calling someone down to the airlock.
“There has to be something we can do,” said Victor.
“There isn’t, Vico,” said Isabella, removing the tube from Marco’s mouth.
“So we’re just giving up?”
“I can’t fix what’s broken here. He was dead before you brought him in. I’m sorry.”
Victor felt numb. His fingers were tingling. Marco was dead. The word hit him like the Juke ship had. Dead. Why had the corporates attacked them? This wasn’t the Asteroid Belt. This was the Kuiper Belt. The family had left the A Belt for this very reason: to get away from the corporates.
How had they gotten so close without us detecting them?
Victor looked down at Marco. He has a family, Victor told himself. A wife, Gabi, and three girls-one of whom, Chencha, was just a year younger than Victor.
Father disconnected the lifeline from the back of his own suit and moved for the door into the cargo bay. “Let’s go, Vico.”
“We’re leaving?”
“You and I have work to do.”
He meant the ship. Victor had seen some of the damage. The power generator was fried. Sensors were gone. PKs were gone. And the auxiliary generators wouldn’t last forever. If the family was going to survive, Victor and Father needed to make big repairs fast.
Victor nodded to Father and moved toward the hatch.
“Gabi and Lizbet are on their way down now,” Father said to Isabella. “I’d stay, but Concepcion wants us on the helm immediately.”
Lizbet was Marco’s mother. She still doted on her son.
“Go,” said Isabella. “I’ll wait for them here.”
Father was up and flying. Victor launched after him. A moment later they were in the hall, which was empty now. Father turned toward the helm, taking a side passageway. Before following, Victor looked down the hall in the opposite direction, back toward the fuge, and saw two women coming, still a distance away, heading for the cargo bay. Gabi and Lizbet. Wife and mother. Even at a distance, he could see the terror and panic on their faces.
“Vico, let’s go,” said Father.
Victor was moving again, following Father, weaving through the passageways of the ship. They arrived at the helm, and Victor was surprised to see the entire flight crew here, all busily working. Some were running cables and setting up lights. Others were at their workstations, speaking into their headsets or typing in commands. Concepcion saw Father and flew to him immediately. Victor could tell from her expression that she knew about Marco. Father must have called her.
“Gabi and Lizbet are with him now,” said Father.
Concepcion nodded. “Are either of you hurt?”
“The corporate ship hit Victor,” said Father.
“I’m fine,” said Victor.
Concepcion looked concerned. “You sure? I’m going to need you, Victor, like I’ve never needed you before.”
“I’m fine,” he repeated, though he felt anything but fine. Marco was dead. The ship was damaged, perhaps irreparably so.
“Come with me,” said Concepcion, turning and flying back to the holotable.
Selmo was there, looking at a large holo schematic of the ship in the holospace above the table. A dozen blinking red dots on the schematic marked damaged areas. “The electrical generator is out, of course,” he said. “We don’t yet know how badly it’s damaged. That should be our first priority. The backup generators are fine, but they can only output about fifty percent of the power we typically use every day. So we’ll need to ration power and turn off a bunch of lights and all nonessential equipment. Most of the power will need to go to the air ventilators and the heaters. I’d rather work in the dark than freeze to death.”
“Victor and I will handle the main generator,” said Father. “What about the reactors?”
“The reactors are fine,” said Selmo. “So the thrusters are good. The corporates knew what they were doing. They beat us up, but they left us with the ability to run away as fast as we can.”