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"It jumped? Are they crazy?" I shouted. That was the only way the ghost ship could cover the distance to Idwal and arrive in time to interfere with the tiny speck speeding toward us. If the ghost dropped back into real space close to the platform, their sudden mass would distort the gravity well around the station, sucking parts off the structure like syrup, deforming and even devouring chunks of it. It might even breach an outer wall.
With no way to predict where that might happen, we had no safe place to run.
A sudden sensation, as if something pulled at the very center of me, seized me. The pressure behind my eyes and in my ears rose, drawing back toward the direction from which we'd come until it felt as if everything was pulling out the back of my head. Far around the ring metal squealed in a slowly rising pitch, followed by several loud pops that sounded similar to a projectile gun firing—or station supports cracking.
Abruptly everything snapped back to normal, and station sirens began to shrill.
The Hand's status scrolled at the corner of my left eye, flashing urgent yellow warnings, and a vibration in the wetware under my gloved wrist buzzed warning. The ship was telling me there were dangerous changes in local space—that something large had emerged in precarious proximity to the local gravity sink.
"Shit, they're here!"
A distant boom sounded, and a shudder ran through Idwal. Machinery rattled in the high reaches above our heads, sending down a mist of dust. Another siren, rising and falling in tone, joined the continuous shrill of the first one. Lights all over the section began flashing red.
The lights on the inner chamber of the airlock went yellow.
Further back around the ring a klaxon started blaring harshly. A deep rumble every stationer and spacer knows and fears penetrated above all the other noise. It drove a new and steady vibration through the floor plates.
Somewhere behind us, the massive section walls, designed to isolate a damaged area of the ring from the rest of the station, were closing.
"Vivi—" The same thought struck us simultaneously: one of us had to get back topside and make sure our ride out of here stayed safe and viable.
Saura was the only one who could work with Idwal's systems.
"Go! Secure the Hand!" I said. "I'll do what I can here." If the approaching vessel was our connection and it was in trouble, I had to help.
I shifted the Hand's feeds back to her. "If you need to take the ship and fold, do it." I had my suit. I'd survive until she dared to come back for me.
"Put damned helmet on," she fired back as she sprinted toward Section One and its fall. The echoing boom of the section door sealing drowned out anything else she might have said.
I dutifully pulled on and secured my headgear while I watched her leap across the tracks between Sections Ten and One. Those gargantuan doors remained fixed, so the station had successfully isolated the damaged area. The sirens and lights continued, but the klaxon silenced with the wall closure.
It didn't mean we were safe. The ghost was still out there, and it obviously did not have good intentions.
The pattern of the Proambu message changed again, this time becoming a regular series of loud sounds that, amazingly, managed to penetrate above the rest of the clamor. No doubt it was giving instructions for ring evacuation. Unhappily, it was not meant for me on several levels.
I stared out toward the moon, its right side limned by the glowing greenish giant it circled, and spotted a flicker of blue flame from the small ship's forward thrusters as it tried to brake its headlong rush. Saura was right; it was coming in too fast.
I wondered what happened to the ghost. Maybe it had to cope with the material it pulled off the station on its arrival. We couldn't be lucky enough for it to have destroyed itself with its insane move.
I jogged to the ring's outer wall to watch the approaching vessel. For the first time, I could pick out some details. What I saw left my mouth dry. The damned thing was an in-system shuttle, designed for runs between deepspace ships, insystem, and stationary structures! It was impossible for such a vessel to make it out here to the far reaches of Idwal on its own.
Was the ghost its parent ship, lurking on the outer rim, waiting for it to emerge from hiding and head for the station? Or was the small vessel's parent out there hiding among the structures of the moon?
The shuttle racing toward Idwal was too small to support life for more than a few days. Whatever was going down out here, the timing of the Hand's presence was too coincidental for us not to be involved, courtesy of our alien friends back at Mandragala.
I glanced at the airlock. The lights remained yellow as it transitioned to vacuum. Whoever was coming in would not gain access to the station until the air purge completed.
The blue flare of deceleration jets blazed against the stars. I didn't recognize the shuttle design, but the pilot exhibited skill as they glided up to the magnetic lock, retro-thrusters blazing, and settled snugly to the seals. The lights on the umbilical turned into a steady green line.
It was ready for passenger transfer from ship to station airlock.
For the first time it occurred to me the Proambu must have a great deal of confidence in the pressure glass walls of their public ring, not to have dropped blast shields over them with the shuttle at such close proximity. Meanwhile, the hatch on the ship glided open and a small figure emerged. It took a few hesitant steps forward, past the docking cuff, and stopped to look back.
Saura's description of the Mu Juad as bipedal and one meter tall struck me. I hoped we weren't caught up in some elaborate scheme to ignite war on the Whooex Union or the EA.
There was shadowed movement inside the ship's hatch. A space-gloved hand gestured for the smaller figure to keep moving.
I stared, transfixed, my heart pounding. Was that a kid? Nausea and rage hit me simultaneously—if those two clowns thought I would run kids—
A figure, adult-sized and in unfamiliar spacer garb, followed by another, emerged from the hatch. The first tall figure gestured the little one forward and grasped the arm of the one behind it. The two stumbled along the umbilical, following the little one, while the hatch to the shuttle closed behind them. None of them carried anything in their hands.
Realization shook me. They moved as if they were a family unit.
What the hell was going on here?
The light in Section Ten dimmed. I turned to see the black silhouette of a massive deepspace ship sweep between the glow of the gas planet and the ring.
The larger figures on the umbilical saw it too. Their gestures became frantic.
The ghost was a threat to them.
Did it want them alive? Staring at the umbilical and the attached ship, I realized how fragile Idwal's structural setup was on this level.
When the platform had been active, its creators' biggest worry had probably been tracking stray debris that approached the station. A serious problem, for sure, but one they could easily handle. They had—still did have—some type of automatic zap system to take care of extra-station threats. That would have to shut down temporarily on the approach of a permitted ship. Saurubi had keyed a code before we came in. The little transport shuttle would have done that, too.
The ghost had timed its jump to that opening, and the station be damned. The realization made my skin prickle.
I lost sight of the ghost. Once it cleared the planet glow, the thing disappeared in a ripple of darkness, as if the stars had swallowed it. What the hell kind of effect was that?
But it was still out there, and it had a target in its sights. Did it want the target alive or dead, and if dead, how seriously dead? The resulting debris from a direct hit on the shuttle could rip Section Ten apart. It would certainly destroy the umbilical and throw anything inside it into space.
If it wanted them alive, it had to wait until the passengers boarded Idwal, then come in after them. Since the defenses on the upper dock where Thief's Hand sat had reactivated by now, it would force them to come in through the public ring.
I had a bad feeling a ship that wasn't concerned with the damage a jump into Idwal's gravity well would cause, wasn't particularly concerned with taking prisoners alive. That meant if magnetic locks to the shuttle were slow to detach, the pilot would be forced to rip free to escape.
The three people on the umbilical appeared to be dressed in insulated pressure suits designed for making a quick pass between a station and ship—like they were doing. Those suits lacked any reinforcing material to protect from debris or prolonged exposure to the Vasty. They had to get inside the safety of the station's reinforced airlock. If they didn't move fast, they would die.
I ran my gloves over the seals in my suit and headgear to make sure everything was secure while I studied the control pad on the airlock. Everything on this side remained yellow while it worked toward vacuum to allow entry from space side.
The lights around the external side of the lock abruptly flashed green twice then changed to a steady red, signaling the chamber was in a vacuum state. If the kid hit the right button, the external doors would open and let them inside.
I pressed against the plasglass beside of the airlock to watch the kid, the shuttle and ghost momentarily forgotten. The lights on the umbilical coruscated red, and the outer doors began to separate. At the same moment, out in the darkness of space to my right, I saw a tiny pulse of light.
The next second everything blazed white.