“First things first,” I said, looking around the airlock. My vision was dancing with flickering white spots, a telltale sign that I was within a few seconds of blacking out from oxygen deprivation. I spotted a row of oxygen tanks along one wall and hurried over to the first one in line.
The valve was screwed on tight, and for a moment I thought I was going to die right there with my hand still on the valve. But then it came free, and a flood of cold, dry, delicious air blew across my face.
“Over here,” I called to the others, taking a few more deep breaths and then moving to the next tank in line and opening it. “I don’t see any masks—you’ll have to just stick your faces into the flow.”
“And go easy,” McMicking warned as he maneuvered Hardin and Losutu into the twin streams I’d set up. “We don’t know how much we’ve got, or how long we’ll need it. Compton?”
“Right.” I took a couple more breaths, then crossed to where McMicking was unhooking a coil of safety line from one of the other walls. I took one end and jumped up to thread it over two of the drudge’s legs.
And twitched my arm violently away as a Filly hand darted through one of the gaps and tried to grab me.
I dropped back to the floor, crouching down as a second hand jabbed toward me. Across the airlock, I saw that McMicking had the other end of the coil looped around the other drudge’s legs and was tying it to a large lock ring fastened to the wall.
Or rather, trying to tie it. His hands, I noticed suddenly, were fumbling uncertainly with the line.
There was a blast of air in my ear, and I turned to see Losutu coming toward me, one of the oxygen tanks in his arms with the nozzle pointed toward me. I took two quick breaths and jerked my thumb toward McMicking. Losutu nodded and headed toward the other, and I bent to the task of fastening my end of the line to another of the lock rings. I finished it and turned around.
And stiffened. McMicking was lying on the floor, unmoving, the oxygen tank near him but spraying its air uselessly in the wrong direction. Losutu was hanging just beneath the drudge, fighting weakly against the Filly hand that had reached through another of the gaps and was holding him by his neck.
Two seconds later, I was at McMicking’s side, crouching low in case there were more Shonkla-raa out there still conscious enough to go fishing for Humans. I rolled the oxygen tank over, positioning it so that it was spraying its air supply toward McMicking. Standing up again, I pulled the squeeze bottle of chili sauce from my pocket, aimed as best I could, and sent a stream of the fiery liquid squarely into the Shonkla-raa’s face.
There would probably have been a bellow of pain if the other had had enough air to bellow with. The hand around Losutu’s throat slackened, but before I could pull it free it tightened up again.
Grimacing, I gave the Shonkla-raa’s face another squirt of sauce. This time, the hand didn’t even twitch.
There was another stream of air at the back of my head. I turned to find Hardin coming up behind me, the other oxygen tank hissing toward me.
And as I inhaled the splotchy white spots out of my vision, he slapped the grip of a long, narrow-bladed screwdriver into my hand.
I turned, and with a silent snarl I jabbed the tip of the screwdriver with all my strength into the back of the Shonkla-raa’s wrist. With a violent spasm, the hand finally opened, dropping Losutu to the floor.
I tried to catch him. But the lack of air had dulled my speed and strength, and the best I could do was partially break his fall. He landed heavily beside the tank that was slowly reviving McMicking. I motioned Hardin to get down beside him, then finished tying off the tether line.
Not that the Shonkla-raa were likely to be coming in after us. Not now. The Shonkla-raa I’d stabbed was lying across the drudge’s legs, his bloodied arm still hanging limply through the opening. He was dead, or close enough. So presumably were the rest of his colleagues.
So was Losutu.
We were huddled together on the floor, one of us dead, the rest of us barely alive, pressed close around the second to last of the airlock’s oxygen tanks, when the Spiders finally came for us.
TWENTY-NINE
“I understand,” Morse said quietly from beside me, “that the whole thing’s being filed under the heading of a tragic accident.”
I nodded silently as I gazed across the station at the rows of bodies, and the grim-faced soldiers and medics from the transfer station carrying the stretchers to the shuttle hatchways.
Two hundred and fifty-six dead. Five survivors, aside from McMicking, Hardin, and me, all of them in critical condition. The Quadrail schedule crashed, with ever-growing disruptive ripples flowing out across the galaxy in both transportation and the critical area of interstellar messages and communication.
An accident.
“What about the passengers on the train?” I asked. “Are they saying anything?”
“Nothing of interest,” Morse said. “Bayta was able to get all the display windows opaqued before anyone saw anything.”
I nodded. “Small favors.”
He nodded back. “Bloody small.”
For another minute we stood in silence, watching the grisly cleanup duty. The Shonkla-raa bodies, not surprisingly, had all been spirited away by the Spiders before emergency teams had even been called. Under other circumstances, I reflected, such subterfuge would have been futile, given how many witnesses had seen them.
In this case, most of those witnesses were already dead, and the rest of us weren’t talking.
“Is Bayta still with Losutu?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Morse said. “The others are down the hall, keeping Hardin company while the Cohn aerator cleans out his lungs. Looks like most of the damage is repairable.”
“Good to hear,” I said. I didn’t have any particular affection for the man, but we’d lost enough people for one day.
“Yes,” Morse said. He hesitated. “McMicking is also telling him everything about the Shonkla-raa.”
I grimaced. But there was no way we were going to hide this one under the rug. Not from Hardin. “I trust he made it clear that Hardin needs to keep all this secret?”
“Very clear,” Morse said. “Under pain of death, actually.”
“Which probably doesn’t mean much to Hardin.”
“Coming from McMicking?” Morse smiled tightly. “More than you might think.” He nodded toward the medical center. “Go on over, if you’d like. I can handle any last-minute questions Colonel Savali might have.”
“Thanks,” I said. I took a deep breath, wincing at the brief stab of pain in my lungs and ribs, and headed toward the medical center.
Sam and Carl, naturally, were right behind me.
In any normal disaster of this magnitude, a medical facility this size would have been swamped. Here, with barely enough survivors to fill a vacationers’ travel van, the place was eerily empty.
Losutu’s body had been put on the bed in one of the treatment rooms, laid out almost as if he was lying in state. Seated in a chair beside him, gazing expressionlessly into space, was Bayta.
Pulling another chair over, I sat down beside her, trying to ignore the two defenders as they tapped off into the corner behind us. “Hi,” I said quietly.
She didn’t answer. I reached over and took her hand. It was cold, and felt as lifeless as the body in front of us. I thought of telling her it was okay, or that we’d won, or any of a hundred different and stupid platitudes.
Instead, I just held her hand and kept quiet.
I don’t know how long we sat there. Probably no more than five minutes. Finally, she stirred. “Two hundred and fifty-six innocent people,” she said quietly. “I killed them, Frank. I opened the atmosphere barriers, and I killed them.”
“You had no other choice,” I reminded her gently.