The Khaid reversed his zmetgun and made to slam the metal stock into Hadeishi’s chest, but the Nisei officer bounced up and slashed the alien across the neck of its z-suit with the heavy cutters. The blow sent a shock up both arms, but the creature’s trachea-or equivalent-ruptured. Dark blue-black blood suddenly gushed from the Khaiden’s mouth, sloshing into the bottom of his neck-ring. Its wide-spaced eyes-set into a skull resembling nothing so much as an Afriqan meerkat mated with a hyena’s coloring-glazed with pain.
That was enough-Hadeishi smashed the tool down on the Khaid’s gun hand, knocking the zmetgun free. The rifle skittered away on the metal decking. At the same moment, the lead guard-who had whirled at the gurgling cry from his fellow-triggered a burst from his weapon. The first of the sailors was lunging at the Khaid and caught the burst full in the chest and face. Shattered z-suit material, clothing, and blood sprayed back. The second two men rushed the guard, heads down. Hadeishi darted in behind them, desperate to silence the Khaid before he could sound an alarm. The guard knocked one sailor aside, then fired wildly-missing everything-and Mitsuharu speared the cutters into his faceplate.
Glassite splintered, turning the clear material milky white, but did not shatter.
Hadeishi hurled himself to the side as the zmetgun roared, barrel smoking red hot, and a spray of flechettes ripped across the ceiling of the passageway.
This is taking too long, flitted across Mitsuharu’s mind as he backhanded the Khaid’s helmet with the cutters. This time the blunt tool caught the creature in the join between neck-ring and the helmet proper. The z-suit gel-much the same technology as in a Fleet rig and designed to ablate high velocity impacts-gave way and metal jarred on bone. The Khaid staggered, clawing at its neck, and the other two sailors-hands now free-tore its zmetgun away.
One of them, his own faceplate washed red with blood, jammed the rifle barrel into the guard’s chest and triggered a burst. The corpse jumped and flechettes spalled across the deck.
“Back to the ship,” snarled the other sailor. He’d recovered the other zmetgun and ammunition.
“No!” barked Hadeishi, without thinking. He still had the cutters clenched in both hands and his whole body was shaking with adrenaline. Every instinct screamed to tear down the passage and lose themselves in the environmental conduits sure to be spidering out from the thermocouple into the rest of the ship. “We need to go down deck and look for a shuttle bay.”
“Idiot,” growled the other sailor, now armed himself. “Our only way home is the Wilful -and we can’t let the Khaid capture her. A shuttle will only make a quick coffin…”
“There are-” Hadeishi fell silent. Both men had already run back up the passage towards the main airlock. He shook his head once, and then snatched up the equipment belt from the nearest Khaid, something that looked like a document pouch on the creature’s thigh and-using the bolt cutters with a sharp, violent jerk-the guard’s right forearm. Then he ran in the opposite direction.
Past the next set of hatchways, Mitsuharu found himself at the top of a gangway leading “down” and paused for a moment to crack open his helmet. The smell of the alien ship was violently awful, but he forced down the urge to vomit and let the heat flowing up from the shaft wash over him.
Definitely a heat exchanger below and that sound -There was a gargling sort of wail echoing from the dripping walls.- will be the holding cells we were destined for. Now I do need that shuttle bay.
Which posed a dilemma: his Khadesh was limited to the barest courtesies-the human palate and tongue couldn’t really duplicate the high-pitched yelping and growl undertone that characterized the diplomatic language used by the clans-and he couldn’t read most of their written language. The ship itself, even if stolen from another starfaring race, wasn’t a model he recognized, so he was going to have a hard time guessing where to find the nearest shuttle bay.
From in here, he realized. I need to get outside, where I can make better time…
He cocked his head, listening again, and now-very distantly-he heard something like the roar of gunfire. Some of the overhead lights flickered and Hadeishi felt certain the sailors from the Wilful had found an honorable death.
No more distractions for the enemy. He picked a corridor that seemed-if he was not entirely turned around-to lead outward towards shipskin, and ran swiftly along, watching the maze of pipes and conduits overhead as he moved. A dozen meters on, a big pipe emerged from the floor and disappeared through the wall to the left. It was banded with bright mauve stripes and covered with blocky lettering.
Mitsuharu slowed, turning his wristband over to let the temperature sensor pick up the ambient radiation from the conduit. Five-degree spike, he saw. Just what I need.
Now he felt his shoulders creep with tension and a prickling at the nape of his neck, which usually meant something hostile was close by. He scuttled along the base of the wall, shining a hand-light at the joins in the passage molding. Fifteen meters down he found an unusually thick panel border and stopped.
His helmet was still open, so he squatted down and closed his eyes, listening.
Back the way he’d come, there was an echoing grinding sound. Hatchway opening.
The tool-belt produced a cutting torch and he thumbed the plasma emitter to quarter power and bit in along the edge of the panel. The join came apart, revealing a dark access way carpeted with mold. Ah, brown mushrooms! he thought, a fragment of an old song unspooling in memory. In we go.
The panel pulled closed behind him and, duckwalking, he scrabbled along by helmet light. After only a few moments, the shape of the huge heat exchanger conduit loomed up before him. This time the mauve striping had been replaced by bright crimson bands and, to his surprise, lines of a different-familiar-script ran between the warning markings.
This was a Hesht ship? Astounding. I thought they suicided their-well, maybe the Khaid bought it from some bankrupt pack. Or a shipyard switched clients in midstream.
He did remember a bit of low Heshok, as well as most of the more important letterforms, and what he could make out of the warnings indicated that yes, this was an air circulator attached to the heat exchangers. On one of our ships, that means the outbound air will circulate through shipskin radiators to cool before being returned to the sterilizers.
Feeling grimly determined-Musashi himself would have been impressed by such a stoic demeanor in the face of such calamity-Hadeishi hurried along beside the conduit until, after squeezing past a number of stanchions, he found an access port to the exchanger itself. Finally!
The panel popped loose with a little help from his pry bar, and then-after making sure the things he’d looted from the Khaid guard were secured to his suit by lanyards and his helmet was snugged tight-he crawled inside. Immediately, a hot wind roared around him and his z-suit began to squeak alarms about the mounting temperature. He also felt his stomach quease with the loss of gravity and guessed he’d just moved past the last of the g-decking.
Quickly then, he thought, scrambling along the pipe as quickly as he could. I wonder how long my temperature regulator will hold out?
Some time later the character of the conduit changed. The pipe came to an abrupt end in a wall filled with hundreds of dimples, each with a much smaller pipette opening recessed within. Hadeishi stopped, feeling the hot wind beating at his back, and then retreated. This proved difficult-going with the airflow, he hadn’t realized how hard it was pushing at him-but three meters back from the diffusion wall he found an access plate. Now he pressed his temperature sensor against the opening, and saw with relief that the plate itself was quite cold.
They’d be fools to have open vacuum adjacent to the air exchanger, right? Don’t want to trip a pressure alarm.