‘What about this prisoner?’ asked Alphe, looking worried. ‘Do you think Eli has actually released him?’
‘Some degenerate fuck from Platini Jail,’ said Halman dismissively. ‘Ronnie Carver. I think we can expect him to be dead, judging by Eli’s record. The pilot, too. But I guess we can’t depend on that.’
‘I’d like to think of another way. . .’ said Alphe, shaking his head.
‘You are forgetting what’s at stake here!’ bellowed Halman with sudden, unnecessary volume. ‘If we don’t get that shuttle back, then we are all in very real danger. Everyone on board this station is going to die.’ He enunciated the last three words slowly, beginning to pace up and down the room with his hands laced behind his back. They watched him as one, cowed by his loudness. ‘Does anybody fail to understand that? Time is against us. The end is fucking nigh, boys and girls! We are going to get that shuttle back! Because we have to. If I need to do it myself, I will. I just don’t think I’m the best man for the job.’
‘No,’ agreed Ella quietly, stilling him with a look. ‘I’m the best man for the job.’
‘Maybe we can flood the shuttle with poison gas?’ suggested Liu, smiling graciously. Everyone turned towards him with expressions of identical shock. ‘What?’ asked Liu, eyebrows arched.
‘Fuck me, old man,’ said Halman in amazement. ‘I never knew you had it in you.’
‘He has a good point,’ said Ilse Reno. Her eye glowed evilly and her small face was set hard. ‘Gas ’em. Fuck it.’
‘Do we have any poison gas?’ asked Halman. Lina didn’t know if he was seriously considering it or not.
‘Refinery could make some,’ suggested Liu. ‘They use all sorts of stuff.’
‘Or Fionne,’ added Alphe. ‘She’s a dual chemistry and physics grad. Something of a genius, in fact. Don’t tell her I said that.’
‘Right,’ said Halman, nodding his grizzled head as he continued to stride about the room. ‘Young Fionne will fucking love that, won’t she? What d’you reckon, Liu? Cyanide? Mustard gas? Hmm?’
‘Mustard gas should be fairly easy to make,’ said Liu, utterly failing to catch the sarcasm. Lina almost laughed, although it really wasn’t funny when you thought about it.
‘Mustard gas,’ agreed Halman, still nodding. ‘Good. I’ll get her on it.’
‘They have suits anyway,’ said Ilse. ‘Those shuttles carry loads of them.’
‘Look,’ said Halman. ‘I’m no humanitarian, but I’m not just flooding that ship with poison. That’d be fucking murder. You want to end up in some Farsight prison?’
‘Technically,’ said Liu, ‘I think we live in one already. But I take your point.’
‘And as Ilse says,’ Halman continued, ‘it’s unlikely to help anyway. We’d only introduce another dangerous factor. If they go in armed, and find anyone there, then they can order them to surrender. Right, Ella?’
‘Right,’ she agreed uncertainly. Lina wondered if Ella hadn’t actually been in favour of the poison gas approach.
‘And if they don’t, then shoot them. But it would be wrong of us not to offer them a chance. A choice. And the pilot, or even the prisoner, might need rescuing from Eli if they’re still alive.’
‘I suppose so,’ conceded Liu. Although he was still smiling, he looked a little disappointed.
‘How long do we have?’ asked Lina. ‘Power, I mean.’
Alphe straightened, shrugging his broad shoulders. ‘Like this. . . maybe two days. Then we lose the lot — air, heat, kinetic defence, rotation. . . everything that matters.’ He swallowed heavily and breathed silently, tensely, for a moment. ‘And to think I’ve had aeroponics on my ass about the fucking plants this morning!’ He laughed bitterly, looking around for support. ‘The plants!’
‘We should condense our living space,’ suggested Hobbes.
‘What d’you mean?’ asked Ella.
‘Shut off the quarters, the common areas, even medical, and set up a dorm somewhere in the offices, maybe centred here. Kill the power in the rest of the place and suck the air out. We’d use a fraction of the energy that way, buy ourselves a little time. We can re-compress the air and save it.’
Halman was nodding thoughtfully. ‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘And as for aero — they can spin on it.’
Alphe laughed again, with slightly more feeling this time. ‘Yeah, that’s what I told them,’ he agreed.
‘Amy,’ said Halman, ‘We’ll do it — condense our space, I mean. Get the word round. I want everyone to pack a single bag of personal items. A single bag only, okay? Two hours, and I want the whole staff within these two corridors.’
‘Sure, Boss,’ said Amy, her eyes lighting up. She turned and practically ran out, looking like a bloodhound that had caught a scent.
‘Alphe, you guys get everything you’ll need out of maintenance and the warehouse. We’ll re-power the hangar when we need it, but maintenance will stay off.’
‘Of course,’ said Alphe, as if this should have gone without saying. ‘They’ll have most of what we need in the hangar anyway.’
‘Good,’ said Halman. ‘Now what’s the story with the gennies? Last thing I saw was you and Fionne wading around knee-deep in the floor down there.’
‘Ha!’ barked Alphe. ‘No joy, the last time I was there. Fionne’s next door with Rocko, on a well-earned break, and Win Ling is on the power relay. But the actual turbines were damaged too, and to be honest we probably aren’t going to be able to even get one of them running without the servicing kit from the shuttle.’ He cast his gaze about, defiant, as if someone might try to blame him personally for this disastrous situation. ‘Sorry,’ he added warily.
Lina found herself to be unsurprised by this. She didn’t think there was any bad news that could surprise her any more.
‘Right,’ Halman said. ‘And the air system? I think everyone has noticed that there’s something wrong with it by now.’
Alphe rubbed his chin with the back of one hand. He looked like he needed a shave. ‘Well, the last gases we took did show some traces of refinery contaminants. Nothing to worry about yet, and of course the refinery’s down now. But it might still get serious before long. And of course, when the battery goes, the air goes. Currently, it’s on about eighty percent. It’s also possible that something else is burning out in the system. We simply haven’t had a chance to investigate further. We’re sinking damn fast if I’m honest.’ Everybody nodded sympathetically. None of them envied Alphe his job right now, however hard their own tasks might be. ‘And if we’re pulling back to a few corridors, my guys’ll have to wear suits to even look at the scrubbers. Right now, we can still breathe, so we have higher priorities. Now there’s something I never imagined I’d say. Higher priorities than the air scrubbers.’ He shook his head in wonder.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Halman. ‘Power is everything. The cold’ll kill us first at this rate.’ Lina was suddenly aware that it was cold in here. She shivered, joggling the table and causing the torch to fall over. Halman replaced it without comment. ‘I wondered if we could put out some solar panels,’ he continued. ‘Don’t we keep spares for the laser-relay satellites?’
‘There are some panels stacked in storage,’ agreed Liu. ‘I can drag them out for you before we kill the power. Maybe we can–’
Alphe was shaking his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, overriding Liu. ‘It sounds great in theory, granted. But how are we going to fit them? The loader is the only thing that can even carry those solar panels, and in case you all forgot, we don’t have the loader any more. We’d have to place them by hand, in suits. I don’t honestly think it’s possible. And if we could, it would probably take us so long to set them up that we’d run out of battery before we even got them going.’