"That's easy for you to say," Picks said, as he watched the Nidu marines scurry to take cover from the grenade they'd placed by the airlock. "You're not the one on the other side of that door."
"There," Lehane said, and pointed to one of the monitors. The final foursome of Nidu Marines had come up the stairs and were making their way to the pod. "That's all of them. Confirm that for me, please, Aidan."
Picks bent over the monitors and did a count. "Looks like twelve of them to me," Picks said. "That's all that are left standing."
"Aidan," Captain Lehane said. "I do believe there's been a catastrophic hull breach on the Promenade Deck. Bring the ship to emergency status. I authorize you to section and seal the Promenade Deck. If you please, section and seal the aft left quarter first; that's the site of the breach."
Picks grinned. "Yes, Captain," he said, and went oft"to deliver the orders.
Promenade Decks are both a blessing and curse to commercial cruise liners. They are designed to accommodate huge windows that allow passengers to oooh and aaaah over starfields, planets, and all other manner of celestial phenomena, and make for fabulous brochure pictures to sell Midwest housewives and their cheap husbands on the idea of an interstellar cruise. The curse is these windows make Promenade Decks inherently far less structurally sound than any other part of the ship. A good random smack by chunk of rock or debris into a window at cruising speed runs the statistically extremely small yet not entirely trivial chance the window will buckle or shatter, sucking its fragments and any poor passengers nearby into the blackness of space.
After a few high-profile incidents of this, including the unfortunate incident of the Hong Kong Star, in which the parents of the First Husband of the UNE were popped into cold vacuum like two immensely politically connected corks, every space-going cruise liner with a Promenade Deck registered for service by the UNE had to be able to lock down the entire deck at least and preferably the deck in sections, to insure a hull breach on the Promenade Deck did not threaten the integrity of the entire ship or expose any more passengers than absolutely necessary to the risk having their blood boil into nothingness as they unexpectedly toured the cosmos without a ship.
In the case of a catastrophic hull breach (according to UNE regulations on the subject) a ship the size of the Neverland must be able to seal its Promenade Deck in no more than 15 seconds. In tests, the Neverland could seal off its Promenade Deck in 12.6 seconds. Sectional seals took even less time: between 5.1 and 7.8 seconds. Of course, that was before the Neverland had been entirely furnished and put into service. Captain Lehane wondered idly if the presence of carpeting, lounges, and potted palms would have any effect on the final numbers.
"Sealing now," Picks said. There was a shipwide wrenching and an immense noise as Promenade Deck vacuum doors, cleverly disguised as floors and walls, sprang up and out and connected together with an alacrity that made Lehane want to track down their designer and send him or her a congratulatory fruit basket. The carpets, lounges, and plants didn't seem to slow down the doors, although they catapulted quite nicely. On his monitor, Lehane could see some of the Nidu marines firing at furniture in surprise as it was flung around them.
"Done," Picks said, "thirteen point two seconds. Not bad. And all the Nidu marines are in the aft left quarter."
"Excellent work, Aidan," Lehane said. "Now, if I recall correctly, the hull breach occurred in that section of the deck."
"I believe it did," Picks said.
"That means one of the panorama windows has been compromised," Lehane said. "I order you to clear out the rest of the window, in order to seal the breach."
"Yes, sir," Picks said. "Does the captain have any particular window in mind?"
"I leave it in your capable hands," Lehane said.
Although the Haysbert-American cruise line was a low-to-mid-price cruise line, it nevertheless had one of the best reputations for ship safety in the entire UNE commercial fleet; the Haysbert-American executives believed that such a reputation would be a selling point to the previously mentioned Midwest housewives, and indeed it was. One of the more obscure safety touches was that every window on a Haysbert-American ship, from the smallest porthole to the largest dome, was a single transparent crystal grown into its setting during ship manufacture. The crystal's shearing angle—its "weak" angle—was along an axis secured by the setting; the axis describing the surface of the window was remarkably resistant to collision. If something cracked a window on a Haysbert-American cruise liner, it was indeed a hell of an impact.
The drawback to growing one's windows into place was if one was cracked or broken it was difficult to extract it. Haysbert-American solved this problem by constructing tiny shaped explosive charges into their window settings which would drive chisel-like planes of metal into the crystals shearing angle, shattering what remained of the crystal and allowing deployment of the emergency vacuum door hidden within its retaining wall. This deployment occurred automatically unless overridden by the bridge.
"Clearing debris," Picks said, and shattered the panoramic window closest to the lifepod.
From his monitor Lehane saw the long, curving window suddenly appear to go opaque as millions of hairline cracks accelerated through the crystal lattice. The Nidu marines visibly jumped at the sound; one of them wheeled around and raised his weapon at the window to fire at the noise.
"Jumpin' Jesus," Lehane said. These had to be some of the most jittery military personnel Lehane had ever seen.
The Nidu marine didn't get a chance to fire his weapon; the cracked window exploded outward, sucking the marine out with it. Several other marines followed in short order, some knocked out the hole by flying debris, others simply pushed out by the hurricane force of the air escaping into space and seeking equilibrium with a vacuum countless millions of kilometers on all sides. Two marines managed to keep themselves from being launched into the darkness, which merely meant they spent their last few seconds vomiting their lungs out onto the Promenade Deck. Death relaxed their grips and the two of them collapsed onto the floor, the very last of the air in the section ruffling their uniforms as it whistled past.
"Your orders, Captain," Picks said.
"Secure that breach and launch the lifepods," Lehane said. "But delay launching Creek's until I tell you."
"Breach secured," Picks said. "Launching pods now." Lifepods engirdled the Neverland like strings of pearls, each pod set in something akin to a magazine for a gun. When a life-pod is activated, it is pushed into space by electromagnetic repulsion, after which its tiny directional engines kick in, tweaking the descent of the lifepod toward its assigned beacon or location. As soon as one launches, a second is hauled up to the airlock door to allow another set of passengers to load in. The process is efficient and surprisingly quick; a new pod moves up to the airlock door in as little as five seconds after the last one clears. There were 144 lifepods on board, more than enough for passengers and crew. Except for today, when they were all being launched with only two passengers to share between them. Lehane hoped to God he knew what he was doing.
Around the ship Picks launched one lifepod after another, far more rapidly than usual because there was no wait for passengers. Lehane counted 40, 50,60 pods popped into space. "Launch Creek's pod," Lehane said. "Launched," Picks said, a moment later. "Keep launching the pods. All of them," Lehane said.
"Sir, the Nidu ship is hailing us," said Susan Weiss, the Never-land's communications technician. "They're demanding we stop launching lifepods and asking for the whereabouts of their marines."
"Ignore them," Lehane said. Too many pods were out there now. There was no way they could shoot them all down before one of them got clear of the communications jam and broadcast its distress beacon. The Nidu couldn't blow up the Neverland now, not without risking open war and censure. Lehane felt okay with pissing on them a little bit.