CHAPTER 4

We’re halfway there when the lights go out.

That means life support’s gone down. We only have the oxygen present in the ship, and it won’t be recycling, so when we use it up, we’ll be breathing carbon dioxide instead. Hopefully, we won’t be here that much longer.

Without breaking stride, Vel snaps a torch-tube and navigates our course back to the hatch. He’s unencumbered, so it makes sense for him to lead the way, but again, I don’t like it. March and Doc are both weighted down with two kids each, so they won’t be much help in a fight. The burden of defense falls on Vel and, to a lesser degree, Hit and me, though we can only offer one-handed backup.

If it comes to it, we’ll have to drop the children and hope they have the sense to stay down. I’ll certainly order mine to stay put, but my experience in the crèche on Gehenna taught me that children don’t always do as they’re told.

“Almost there,” Vel says.

Foreboding shimmies down my spine.

Then, from the darkness beyond, a low voice says, “Don’t move.”

I don’t, not so much as a millimeter. But I can speak. “Why the hell did you attack a bigger ship? And what are you doing out here anyway?”

I’m trying to buy time for Vel to assess the situation. With him holding the light, they can see us, but we don’t have a target. There’s no telling how many of them there are, either. There’s no denying the fact that this doesn’t look good for us. But maybe we can flip it somehow.

“Your shields are good. We didn’t detect your weapons until it was too late.” I hear the shrug in his voice. “As to what we’re doing here, you can frag off.”

“Probably waiting on a rendezvous with a buyer,” Hit says softly.

Mary, I wish she didn’t know that.

“What do you want?” March asks, as if they’re the intruders.

“I’m the captain of this ship. Obviously, I want my cargo back and the Danube repaired, but that’s not going to happen. So I’ll take your ship instead.”

Dina actually laughs. “You really think that’ll work? Have you seen the size of our ship? It’s teeming with trained soldiers.”

That might be a stretch for most of the clan, but they’re certainly more familiar with battle than the average crewman. Unless there are a lot more bodies here than I sense breathing in the dark, they won’t be able to hold the ship. The boy on my left hip lets out a whimper, and I try to reassure him silently with a pat on the back.

“Then it’s just as well I’d planned to take hostages. They won’t move against us if there’s a chance to save their beloved officers.”

He might be right about that, but he’s out of his mind if he thinks we’ll go along with it. I’m not letting this asshole get on our ship. He’s been bullying civilians too long if he believes it’s as simple as surprising us and then we cave to his demands.

“I have infrared,” Vel says in Ithtorian. “There are four of them, two meters away.”

Just a few clicks and chitters, nothing that would make sense to any other human. I smile as the enemy captain gets nervous.

“What was that?”

Warmth prickles down my neck as March surges into me. He knows about my translation implant, proving handy even off Ithiss-Tor. Vel has a plan?

He has intel. I relay it silently, wishing I had the vocalizer, which would allow me to speak Ithtorian as well. But I can’t respond, only understand what Vel says. Be ready.

“What’s the matter?” Hit taunts. “Scared of the dark? You’re worse than these kids. That must be embarrassing.”

I’m not sure that’s wise, but she succeeds in distracting him.

“Enough of this,” he snaps. “I want you to line up and start crossing, or I splatter your brains on the wall, one by one.”

“We all want a peaceful resolution to this,” Doc says in a conciliatory tone. “Why don’t you tell us who you want to cross first?”

While they try to decide who poses the most threat, Vel addresses me in Ithtorian. “On my mark, get everyone down.” He shifts a little. I can hear the movement, but it’s hard for me to see with him holding the light. And then: “Now.”

“Down,” I shout.

Mary bless them, the others all hit the floor at the same time. I cover the boy with my body, trying to shield him from the worst of the fight. The kids are crying again, quiet, hiccuping sobs that hurt me because they sound so weary and desperate. Vel’s torch-tube hits the floor, sending a sickly green glow spinning all over us, and I roll onto it. He’ll do better in the dark.

I can hear Vel fighting, but I’m not afraid. A few stray shots singe the floor nearby, but they don’t have targets anymore. From the wet, sucking noises, he’s using his blades on them. It’s beyond eerie, lying in the blackness, listening to them die.

It can’t be longer than a minute, but it feels like an eternity before Vel says in universal, “We can go now. The way is clear.”

When I move off the torch-tube, I can see the corpses piled a few meters away. Vel stacked them facedown so the children wouldn’t have to see the entrails. That strikes me as uncommonly sensitive. Around me, the others clamber to their feet, each picking up a kid.

One of the girls who had been clinging to Doc takes a step forward. She stares up at Vel for a few seconds, then she holds out her arms. That’s right. He’s a good guy.

He doesn’t move for a moment, then he emulates the rest of us, lifting her with one arm and settling her against his armored side. He’s not snuggly but she doesn’t seem to mind. I guess defeating the bad guys went a long way toward raising his stock.

“Can we be sure the seal is intact?” I ask.

These kids don’t have pressure suits. If the movement of the doomed ship has wrenched at the seal between our hatches, the tube may not be safe. I’ll be damned if we went through all this just to have them die in vacuum. From the others’ expressions, they’ve already thought of this.

“Readings indicate it is,” Doc answers.

But there’s no way to be sure it won’t pull apart during the crossing, March tells me silently.

There are six of us, seven of them. Too many for them to squeeze in with us, one-on-one. But two kids can fit in one suit, if we had a spare. That leaves one kid to squeeze in per person. I start peeling out of mine.

Having gleaned my idea, the rest of the crew help their children wiggle down into the pressure suits with them. They make interesting bulges, but the fabric is tensile and fastens over them. That’s what makes these pressure suits adaptable for many humanoid races. They’re forgiving of odd lumps and extra appendages.

March puts a hand on my shoulder, stilling me. “What’re you doing?”

My eyes meet his. “You know what I’m doing. Somebody will need to carry the two kids in this suit. They won’t be able to see well enough to walk.”

“I’ll do it,” Hit says quietly. “For lightest body weight, I’m the strongest.”

That’s undoubtedly true.

We intended to run back across for extra suits if we found survivors, but the whine of the engines renders that impossible. This vessel doesn’t have long; soon it’ll be dead in space. The magnetic tow cables will keep it within reasonable proximity, but wreckage makes that dangerous as well. We don’t want the dying ship to collide with ours, so we need to finish this as quickly as possible and cut it loose.

I help the kids into my suit and fasten them up. The little boy puts on the helmet because he’s taller; the little girl snuggles against his back. Resemblance makes me think they might be brother and sister. I give a nod, and Hit picks them up. With a kid on her chest, she can’t be elegant, so she drapes them over her shoulder.

“I’ll go first,” she says. “And I can run back with the suit once everyone else is across.”

The ship rocks again, making the tube bounce. I shake my head. “We don’t have time. Just go.”

One by one they leave. March says nothing. I don’t know if he’s too angry to protest, or if he just can’t think of anything to say. Doc is next to last. Before he takes his turn, he hands me something from the first-aid kit.

“Oxygen patch. Seal it over your nose and mouth before you make the run, just in case. It won’t protect you from vacuum, but it will offset some of the cyanotic effects.”

It may keep me conscious long enough to get where I’m going. I can’t think of anything more horrible than choking to death in the array, just a few seconds from safety. Maybe I’m worried over nothing. Maybe the seal will remain intact. But I’m not testing it on the kids.

From a science standpoint, they should be able to recover from a few seconds’ exposure out there. But what if they don’t? They might have some medical condition we don’t know about; they’re probably weak from maltreatment. What if they die? I’m not willing to take the risk unless it’s my own skin on the line. That’s mine to gamble.

Finally, my turn comes. I’m the last one here. As Doc suggested, I slap the patch over the lower half of my face, push past the hatch and into the tube.

Then I run.