Walking confidently forward, Cormac said, ‘So what happened to my attack ship?’
‘It took the only option available to avoid destruction, and it U-jumped,’ replied Orlandine. ‘It is now some hours of travel away within the disrupted area — that much at least I was able to calculate by its U-vector. Doubtless its U-space engines are wrecked and it has sustained much other damage besides, up to and including the loss of its AI. Obviously I won’t know until the light of that occurrence reaches me here.’ It wasn’t just travel and communication that were slowed to the speed of light, or below, by U-space disruption, but observation too.
Finally the door to the interface sphere opened and Orlandine herself stepped out. Her holographic image had manifested aboard King of Hearts as an unaugmented female clad in a simple one-piece ship suit. Obviously that had been stock footage, for Orlandine wore a haiman carapace with the petals of a sensory cowl open behind her head, a heavy spacesuit and an assister frame that also provided her with two extra limbs. Capable of looking after herself indeed, but Cormac rather suspected her powers were not primarily those now visible before him. He had no doubt that one wrong move would result in all hell being unleashed from the Jain technology that crammed every nook surrounding him.
‘I see,’ he said.
He saw that his link to the CTD had been cut; he saw that his method of escape was now hours away, if it could even get back here to become effective. He was in a trap, and now the cherry on top of this shit-cake was standing up from where it had been sitting silently on the other side of the room. Even Arach was cringing down a little at the sight.
‘Fuck,’ Cormac added. ‘You.’
Mr Crane reached a hand up to raise his hat in acknowledgement.
Her head heavy and her stomach tight, Mika felt poised between the two, stretched and almost on the verge of panic. She settled her craft upon a flat area of composite hull that was utterly free of Jain coral or any of those wormish growths, but knew she would not be able to avoid them so easily once she found her way inside. She did not relish the prospect.
‘Your suit lights will not be able to provide it with enough energy to attack you. That fact is plain physics,’ Dragon reassured her.
‘Yeah, but what if there are any caches of energy here?’ she said tightly.
‘There are,’ Dragon replied, ‘but my remote contains sophisticated scanning equipment, so I will warn you in plenty of time if there is any danger.’
‘Great.’
Mika checked through the screen display until she found ‘gecko function’, and then initiated it. As if it had descended with glue on its runners, the craft stuck in place. She killed its lights, the light amplification of her visor still providing her with an adequate view of her surroundings, though the ghosting effects were numerous. Using the controls at her belt, she called up the visor display and checked the options available. Her suit possessed its own lights, apparently, though she had not noticed them when putting it on. Complemented by the light amplification, they were very low intensity, which was just fine right now. She turned them on and immediately her surroundings became sharp and clear. It took her a little while to determine that the light was provided by photo-emitters located on her chest: a series of glassy discs which she had noticed earlier but assumed to be sensors of some kind. She inspected them, placing her fingers over their brightness and observing the shadows cast. Then abruptly she shook herself: no more procrastination.
Mika hit the door control and waited while the cabin automatically purged — blowing a cloud of vapour outside, which drifted off like a crippled spectre. The door then opened, and she unstrapped herself and stepped out, using her visor menu to again select ‘gecko function’, this time for her boot soles. Taking a few paces away from the craft, she felt as if she was walking through treacle. Halting, she gazed at a spot where Jain-tech had torn a hole through the attack ship’s hull from the inside and then slithered out to spread over the exterior. She could probably squeeze her way in through there but, no matter what Dragon said, she wanted to actually touch that stuff as little as possible. Mika started heading for the airlock situated further along the hull, then paused and turned upon noticing sudden movement.
The remote had eased itself down the side of her craft and, with a ripple passing through its body from nose to tail, propelled itself out into vacuum. Mika thought for a moment that it must have made some sort of mistake, for surely it now had no way of getting itself back to the attack ship, but it flapped its skate wings and changed direction, as if it was actually flying through air.
‘How the hell is it doing that?’ asked Mika.
‘Doing what?’
‘Flying.’
‘In the sense that you mean, it is not flying,’ Dragon replied. ‘For the duration of your journey here it has been converting much of its material structure to reaction mass, which it is now ejecting through numerous pores on its wing surfaces.’
Now Mika noticed the fog of vapour spreading out from the remote, and how the flapping of its wings did not seem to correlate with its motion. After a moment the flapping ceased as it brought itself to a full stop and focused its stalked eyes towards her. As she continued towards the airlock, it followed her like a pet bat.
No matter how modern a ship might be, airlocks were always provided with a simple manual option in case the power should fail. Of course, had there been air inside this ship it would have been impossible for her to open the inner, manual, part of the lock from the outside, for it hinged in and the air pressure would have held it in place. Judging by the holes she could see in the ship’s hull she very much doubted there was any air left, though there was always the possibility of some being trapped inside the lock itself.
The lock door was flush with the hull, and the manual lever lay underneath a cover that detached easily once she pressed in the catches either side of it. She tossed the cover away and watched it tumble towards the surrounding dark forest. Grabbing the handle she pressed in the safety release, which moved easily, then pulled the handle around the length of its traverse, and felt the clonk of the locking mechanism through her feet. She shoved against the lock door, but it would not move. Probably the seal was stuck. Standing upright, she stamped down on the door with one foot, being careful not to detach herself totally from the hull. The door hinged in enough to make it distinct from the rest of the hull. Another stamp dropped it an inch further. Crouching down, Mika lodged the fingers of one hand under the edge of the frame and with her other hand pushed down on the door. It resisted for a moment, then something ripped and it hinged all the way inside. She noted chunks of hardened breach foam floating about within the airlock and realized what had happened. The damage to the ship had distorted the shape of the door frame, so sealant had been automatically injected. That probably hadn’t helped those still inside the ship. Mika peered down further into the airlock and found confirmation of that last suspicion.
The orange suit was immediately recognizable since she had seen another less than an hour ago. It was stuck to one side of the airlock, bound in place by Jain tendrils. Mika pushed herself down inside the lock and took a closer look. Behind the visor the mouth of the mummified face was wide open as if frozen in a last scream, and inside she could see small spikes of Jain coral. She shuddered and moved on.
No problem getting through the inner door — it seemed the distortion that had caused her problems with the outer one did not extend here. Beyond was a small chamber for spacesuit storage and recharging. Mika pressed her gecko soles down against the floor and walked across the area to a sliding door. Again she had to pull the cover from a manual control — a handle that folded out to wind the door back on a rack and pinion. The remote drifted up behind her as she peered into the corridor this opened onto.