“Anderson?” he screamed and covered his face. “What are you doing?”
Jelly swiped her metal claws, tearing the skin in three sections down the side of his face.
“Gaah!”
Tor kicked Jelly away, sending her tumbling through the gravity-less air. He swung his gun in her direction and squeezed the trigger.
“You dumb rodent.”
Bang.
The bullet exploded in the chamber. Tor expected it to fly out of the barrel, but in zero gravity, he’d managed to blow his hand apart in a haze of fire and shrapnel.
Tor screamed and held his damaged hand up. “Kill it.”
Baldron pushed himself against the wall and kicked his feet to the ceiling. He looked back to N-Carcerate to see that door was open. “Oh no…”
Bonnie floated into the air with the grenade in her hand. “What do we do?”
“If it goes off here, we’re dead. Sucked out into space if the detonator doesn’t kill us first.”
Jaycee released his K-SPARK shotgun. Instead of hitting the ground, it simply floated away from his palm. “Gimme the bomb.”
“What are you going to do?” Tripp asked, pushing himself into Wool’s cell and grabbing her shoulders.
“Something I should have done the instant I met them.”
Bonnie pinged the grenade toward Jaycee.
“If I throw it hard enough, Botanix might contain the blast.” He caught the grenade and pulled his arm back. “Duck.”
Tripp hugged Wool, who clung to him for dear life. “What the— no!”
Jaycee hurled the grenade down the corridor with all his might.
The bomb hurtled down the central passage, headed for Tor and Baldron – and Jelly.
Jelly knew instinctively what was happening. She pushed her hind legs off the ground and bolted behind the grenade.
Her claws latched onto the flying bomb and carried her toward Botanix’s open door.
She pressed her knees to her stomach and planted the soles of her hind feet on the dumb bomb.
“What’s she doing?” Tor held his breath and grabbed onto Baldron’s arms.
“I don’t know.”
Jelly kicked the dumb bomb forward, pushing it faster along the weightless corridor.
As she kicked away, she somersaulted, legs-over-head and caught the Botanix door frame. The lower-half of her body swung sideways into the room.
She pulled herself through the door and placed her infinity claws against the plate on the wall.
The door slammed shut on the tip of her tail. “Meeeoooowwww!”
“That is one smart animal,” Baldron couldn’t believe his eyes.
“She’s stuck,” Tor said.
Jelly floated away from the door like a sideways pendulum, trying to “swim’ from the door. Her tail was stuck.
“Anderson?” Tor finally re-evaluated his position in life. Floating before him was a cat smart enough to save the crew from death – at the expense of oxygen.
Baldron swallowed hard. A blob of pink blood drifted away, slowly, from his cheek. “Look at her, she knows what’s happening.”
Jelly swung her metal claws at the pair. “Toooooorrrrrr…” As she tried to speak, clumps of fur drifted from her face, molting into the corridor.
A sliver of blood streaked through the air from her eye sockets. “Toooorrrr—”
KA-BOOM!
Botanix exploded like a self-contained thunderclap in a teacup. The sound of the explosion muffled, sparking against the window.
The plants caught ablaze and shattered. The heat lamps burst into pieces, sending jolts of electricity around the room.
The door shimmed enough to release Jelly’s tail. The tip separated from her body, releasing her into the corridor.
Baldron and Tor turned to face N-Carcerate. “Oh, dear.”
Bonnie grabbed a latch on the corridor wall and propelled herself toward Tor. “Remember? No Russian?”
Baldron went to strike her with his fist. “Yes, I remember.”
“Yeah, let’s stick to that. Stick this.”
Bonnie swung her body around and kicked Baldron in the face. He tumbled back in the air and grabbed a latch on the corridor wall. He booted himself forward and punched Bonnie across the face.
A string of blood flew from her lips and traveled toward N-Carcerate.
“You think you can win, you dumb Yank?” Baldron grabbed her by the back of her hair and snarled in her face. She clasped his fist with both hands and stared him down.
“Yeah, I think I can win.”
Baldron spat in her face. “Repeat after me. I am a dumb robot.”
“Ugghhh,” Bonnie closed her eyes and spat his saliva away from her mouth.
“I am not a robot,” Bonnie growled. “My name is Dr. Whitaker. I am a human being, and I remember everything.”
She yanked his fist away from her head, taking the bunch of hair with it.
Bonnie leaned back and head-butted Baldron on the nose, busting the cartilage within. His face turned a bright pink. The blood on her eyes could have been his, or hers, but she didn’t care.
Baldron held his face in his hands, groaning in pain.
Everyone watched as Bonnie accosted the bad guy.
“On behalf of USARIC,” she said, grabbed his inner-suit collar, holding him up for the last time. “Consider this a dishonorable discharge.”
She planted her titanium foot on his chest and kicked through his breastplate. His body screamed back against the door to Botanix, narrowly missing Jelly.
Baldron floated, twisting and turning in pain. He coughed up a torrent of blood toward the ground.
Tor kept his hands behind his head and looked at Bonnie, terrified. She looked at him and wiped the blood from her eyes. “You want some, as well?”
“No, no,” Tor pleaded, keeping an eye on Tripp as he approached him. “I surrender.”
Bonnie drifted out of consciousness and lilted in the air, her flowing black locks drifted behind her shoulders. “Something… fantastic is… about to happen…”
Tripp pushed his way over to Tor and sealed the zip tie around his wrists. “Tor Klyce, if that’s even your real name—”
“—It is not.”
“—Well, whoever you are, you are under arrest,” Tripp said, “I would ask you to hand over your cyanide capsule, please.”
“My right inner thigh.”
Tripp pushed him towards N-Carcerate. He spun around and drifted toward the cell doors. Tripp reached into Tor’s inner thigh pocket and took out the capsule.
“Thank you very much.”
Tripp shackled the man by his ankle to the cell bed. Wool drifted back and breathed a sigh of relief.
Jaycee kicked himself along the corridor, flying toward N-Carcerate, with the unconscious Baldron in his arms.
Tor was upset. His comrade had been defeated and so, too, had their plans. A pink blob of water fell away from his tear duct. “Why… why is everyone crying pink?”
“I don’t know, Tor,” Tripp said, taking Baldron’s weightless body from Jaycee’s arms. “Blood is usually red. Perhaps it’s a lukewarm communist statement? Who knows.”
“Why does my face feel like it’s on fire?” Tor cried. “What’s happening?”
“Shut up, Russian,” Jaycee threatened to punch Tor’s lights out.
“Now, now, Jaycee,” Tripp said, “There’s no need for rudeness.”
Jaycee clamped his giant glove around Tor’s neck. “He’s responsible for this. If it wasn’t for him, Captain Katz would be alive. Haloo would be alive. We might not have gotten sick.”
“That’s not true,” Tor said, the grip on his neck making him feel sleepy. “We didn’t mean to kill anyone—”