“I understand and obey, Leader Tur-uck,” the Durgar said. He climbed back out the hatch to, presumably, follow his orders.
“You,” Tur-uck said, pointing to one of the remaining Durgar. The lighter orc had a badly battered helmet; it probably wasn’t airworthy anymore. “Get out of your armor. Climb up in there,” Tur-uck said, pointing to the engine access hatch. “Go find the human that escaped that way. If you can’t kill it, don’t return.”
“Yes, Leader,” the Durgar said angrily. He began the difficult process of removing the space armor, though.
“You two,” Tur-uck said to the remaining Durgar. “Help him off with his armor then exit the shuttle and head for Control. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes, Leader,” one of them said, ducking in submission.
“Meet me there,” Tur-uck said, sliding down the hatch ladder. “Great One Reyes, I have the honor to report…”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“One team down, Tragack,” Reyes said, propping his feet on a control console and looking around. “And they didn’t even bother fighting us for the control room. Silly of them.”
“Yes, Great One,” the Dark One replied, soberly. The Changed elf was armed with a long sword and dressed in articulated space armor, much more maneuverable than the suits the orcs used.
Reyes was wearing a similar suit but his was highly patterned in red, blue, orange and green. He’d taken his helmet off and wore only the headpiece for the quantum communicator.
“Reefic,” Reyes said, looking over at the primary goblin pilot. “When are you going to get started?”
“Right away, Great One!” the goblin chorused cheerfully. “I fly it! Going home we are!”
“That’s right,” Reyes said, chuckling as the ship began to vibrate. “Going home.”
“Nicole?” Herzer asked, trotting down the corridor towards Maintenance.
“I’m headed for the engine room,” the girl answered, breathlessly. Her voice was right on the edge of a sob. “They’re all gone.”
“I know,” Herzer said. “You have to pull the injectors, then get out the engineering EVA hatch.”
There was a pause and then the girl did sob.
“Just one problem,” she said, half hysterically. “There’s an orc in the passage behind me!”
“In that case, just get the hell out,” Herzer said. “We’ll come back and pull the damned injector.”
“Herzer?” Nicole said. “Shut the hell up and let me work.”
“You go, girl,” Herzer said, pausing by the hatch to shuttle seven. “Van Krief?”
“Richard’s just about to the engine room,” Van Krief said, popping open the outer lock and dropping through. “He’s going to EVA and meet us at lock fourteen.”
“Okay,” Herzer said as the rest of the team piled through the hatch. “Let’s go. I’ll leave you and your security detachment at fourteen. Meet us in Maintenance.”
Nicole finally reached the end of the long, dark, tunnel and undogged the hatch at the engineering end. There was a grab bar over the tunnel, which she used to swing out and down to the floor.
She quickly crossed to the fusion generator and pulled out a hydrospanner, popping the four hot points on the fusion generator’s top and lifting the twenty-kilo plate off. After that she had to remove the primary computer interface, the injection cover, and last the injector. She’d done the job when bone tired, underwater and upside down. Doing it with an orc closing in was nothing.
As soon as she pulled the forearm-sized injector she walked carefully but steadily to the airlock and considered her options. Turning in place she could see the access hatch and so far, no orc.
She considered the EVA door controls carefully. There was a code that had to be punched to activate the inner door, a security procedure. Back when, people would occasionally go buggy in space. Situational stress disorder. Making sure that only certain people could open hatches was important. Certain hatches, like the EVA hatch in the crew section, required two people to open them. Others, like this one, simply required a code.
She carefully punched in the code and was rewarded with a green light.
“Hello, human,” she faintly heard from behind her. “It’s time to die!”
She stepped into the airlock, set the injector on the deck and grabbed a handhold. Firmly.
Engineering occasionally had situations where it was necessary to move bulky materials through the hatch, such as fusion plants, that were too large to fit in the airlock. Ergo, it could be opened to vacuum. The fusion plant and the reactionless drive system were both vacuum rated, so there was no problem there. The orc, on the other hand, didn’t have on a suit. She hadn’t thought they could get one of those bulky suits into the access tunnel.
“Yes, it is,” she said, quietly, typing in the code to override the safety protocols and open the outer door.
Whatever the orc was going to say was cut off in a squawk as air blasted out the airlock. There was more air, much more air, in the shuttle’s crew spaces and most especially in the, now vented, personnel corridors. The air rushed down the access tunnel in hurricane force, spinning the orc across the room to slam on the far wall. It also blasted the injector out into the deeps of space and beyond New Destiny’s ability to recover it.
Despite the power of the wind, one look at the atmosphere readouts showed that there was hardly any oxygen in the room. In fact, the room was at damned near vacuum pressure, low enough to have caused catastrophic decompression in her erstwhile foe. So Nicole, her boots firmly planted and locked and one hand in a death grip on the handhold, carefully hit the controls to close the outer doors, cutting off the rushing wind.
“That’s for Mike, you bastard,” she said. She also noticed that you could tell when you were in death pressure; the shadows were simply different when there was air present.
“Well, that’s shuttle five disabled,” Herzer said as they made the turn into Maintenance. The personnel access corridor had been fairly… normal. It was just a long, straight tube lighted by glow-paint on the ceiling. You could feel you were in a tunnel underground. The Maintenance access tunnel was different. It was just as well lit and nearly as large, but it curved up in a slope that looked frankly unclimbable. Of course, it was under a constant positive “down” gravity, so each step felt as if it was level. But it was disconcerting, like a fun-house mirror walk.
“Same with seven,” Van Krief called. “Rick’s on his way in. What caused the air-loss lockdown?” Only a moment ago the internal blast doors had closed, cutting the ship into multiple sections. Bravo Two was still sealed off.
“Nicole vented shuttle five for some reason,” Herzer said. “Since you’re already there, and New Destiny doesn’t seem to be stirring have him go by eight and pull that one as well. Take your team and EVA, carefully, checking suit integrity, and join up with him in Support. Then move on the surface to disable three and four. After that, head back.”
“Will do,” Van Krief replied after a moment. “See you soon.”
“Nicole, this is Josten.”
Nicole had dragged the body of the orc over to the airlock and kicked him out with the last puff of air.
“Go,” she said, hooking on her safety line, grabbing a handhold and lifting herself around to clamp her boots on the exterior of the shuttle.
“There’s a group of four orcs between me and Maintenance,” Josten replied, talking quietly. “I think I spotted them before they spotted me, but they’re headed this way. I’m in a shadow patch, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hide for long.”
“You know they can’t hear you, right?” Nicole said, flipping down her goggles as the ship rotated so the sun was in view. “Sound doesn’t carry in space.” She paused for a moment suddenly realizing she was in space. Really. In Space. Nothing around her but vacuum. And… lots and lots of stars. And… the Moon was… really…