The ship shudders, a violent heave that lifts me off my feet and throws me into the wall. Ahead of me, Core/drone barely avoids careening into the bulkhead, her stabilisers firing a moment before her plasform shell smashes into the steelcrete.
‘What was that?’
‘I do not know, Kuma, exterior sensors are still offline.’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘That is not within my programming, however...’ She’s silent a moment as she rights herself and continues bobbing along the corridor. I rush after her. ‘Interior sensors are picking up a change in atmosphere not in line with Citlali’s usual operation.’
‘And that means?’
‘We have been boarded, Kuma.’ Core’s avatar appears in the corridor in front of me, the drone passing through her head like it wasn’t there. ‘We are now attached to the Aeotu.’
I run faster, Core splintering around me as I sprint through her avatar.
I have to get to the Atrium.
‘Interior sensors are showing an influx of fug.’ Core keeps pace with me, her avatar now bobbing along behind the drone. ‘It appears to be concentrated around the grappling lines. I cannot determine what it is doing.’
The new Franken-laser bounces against my back. There’s no air to talk. Oxygen is burning up in my lungs, my heart pumping it out to my muscles, every step vibrating up my shins, through my knees with the thought ‘Go.’
The freight shaft is there, the hatch a patchwork of holes and critter fuzz. I’m through it, ready to run again, when Core/drone flashes red and stops.
I skid to a halt, nose millimetres from her shell.
‘What—?’
The WHOOSH of rushing air and the bright pulse of the mag lines stops me. I turn.
The sled is on us before I can blink.
There’s time enough to jump, a blind leap that throws me against the crumbling tunnel wall before the sled shudders to a halt where my knees used to be.
‘Climb on, Kuma.’ Core/drone hovers over my head.
‘What?’ I’m still staring at the sled, imagining it ploughing into my knees.
‘The sled. Get on.’
‘Oh.’ I swallow. ‘Right.’
No sooner am I on the sled, it takes off. There are no wind shields on a freight sled, nothing to cut the howling gale that screams past my ears or the pressure that brings tears to my eyes. There also doesn’t appear to be any speed control, because I’m plastered against the thin lip that runs all the way around the sled, unable to move. Soon enough I’m forced to close my eyes against the pressure, and then I’m struggling to lift my arm, to turn my head to escape the pressure of the blasting wind against my lids. I can’t tell if we’re going up or down, and Core must have turned the gravity off, because the Atrium is at the top of the ship and surely, we have to go up.
I hope we get there soon, because it’s getting hard to breathe now, hard to hear my heart past the rush of air.
And then the pressure lets up, my lungs no longer fighting the press of my ribs, and I can move my arm.
The sled stops.
I tumble off. Stars bursting in my vision.
I should name them, I mean, I’ve seen them often enough, and the Kuma Hit His Head constellation has a nice ring to it. Grea will laugh.
Core/drone is already darting forward, through the door before I finish blinking the lights from my eyes.
I stumble to my feet, the Franken bouncing against my back.
There’s no corridor beyond. We’ve reached the Atrium, Citlali’s top deck, a huge open space to rival the three Ag decks, and the only place on the ship with an actual view of the void. Except now, instead of a million pinpricks of light, all I see is the sleek lines of Aeotu’s hull.
‘Vacuum!’
Vacuum, the warning cry that parents yell in the night instead of “fire”. My hands are moving, a lifetime of midnight drills taking over, activating my helmet before the rest of me catches up.
And that’s when I see the crack in the hull.
A giant cable has pierced the steelcrete and plasteel, punching a hole all the way through the hull and into the deck. The steelcrete is deformed inwards, the deck the same. The bright blue of an emergency shield plays in the space around the shattered hull, sparking white around the invading cable as it tries to stop our atmosphere from escaping into the nothing of space.
Behind me, more bulkheads snap closed, protecting the rest of the ship and leaving me alone with Core/drone and Aeotu.
I swing the Franken around, holding it with both hands.
The grappling cable is thicker than a shuttle, a giant silver-black column in the middle of the Atrium. I heft the Franken, my finger on the trigger, and stalk toward it.
It gets bigger, seeming to grow in size in the two dozen steps it takes me to reach the edge of the rip it’s made in the deck. I ignore the doubt in my gut, the whisper asking if the Franken will even scratch its surface, and press the trigger. Light blazes, a thin, focused beam that cuts through the air and slices into the cable.
And for a moment I have hope. Watching it slice into the metal, the beam slicing into the silver-black, a centimetre gone with every beat of my heart, and another and another. This might work. This might actually work!
There is something under the silver-black, a glimpse of red like blood, squeezing and pulsing and—
The scream knocks me off my feet.
It rings in my head, louder than anything, than the fug, than the Citlali’s engines than, than...
My bones are vibrating, my skull exploding, my ears...
The sound’s not in my ears. My hands are on my helmet, gripping the plasform like they can squeeze the sound out of my head, and the HUD’s flashing, all systems normal. I see that, somehow, through the pain. The scream is in my head, it’s psionic, carried on the multicoloured, fractured light of Aeotu.
Core/drone is bobbing in front of my face, and I know she’s trying to tell me something, can hear the words, actual words, through the scream in my head but they don’t make sense. I can’t... I can’t—
The world goes black.
I’m in the Atrium, staring up through the plasteel roof, the thin bubble that punches through the ice hull, except that instead of stars, I’m seeing intricate shadows, whorls and lines shifting under yellow lights. Those aren’t the shields that normally protect the Atrium and I wonder at that a minute, and why the sight of it makes my gut cramp and cold slither through my bones.
And then I remember.
‘Shit.’
I’m rolling to my feet, or trying. My head swims, and getting to my knees is enough to make me stagger, to fall forward on my hands. Dizziness swamps my vision, and for a second I’m staring at the deck, trying to remember what I’m doing. There’s something pulling at my chest and shoulder. I reach for it, touch the strap and I remember. This time I make it to my feet, using the Franken as a crutch.
The grappling cable’s still there, an ugly scar through it but now it’s pulsing. The scar is pulsing, not simply with movement but with colour. So many colours I can’t name them all.
I hobble closer, lifting the Franken, finger on the ignition and… stop.
The pulse is changing. No longer the rhythmic thump thump thump of a heart but a flutter, a th-th-th-th pause THUMP.
Th-th-th-th.
Pause.
THUMP.
Th-th-th-th.
Pause.
There’s something in there. In the pause. It’s staring at me from the maelstrom of colour, reaching into my anima and pulling me toward it.
I know you. Know that storm, the lightning, the vast, complicated pathways. The socket-melting brilliance of its core.
‘Aeotu.’ The name is a whisper, trapped within the confines of my helmet and vacuum, and yet…
And yet the pause smiles.
Beckoning. Beckoning.
SISTER.
I’d leap a kilometre if I could, but a kilometre wouldn’t be far enough. ’Holy Terra.’
That voice, that voice came through my comms.
My. Comms.
But how?
‘Core? Core!’
Static, a golden face that flickers and spits on my HUD.
‘Core? What’s happening? Aeotu’s hacked my comms.’
‘Evacuate, Kuma Darzi. All systems compromised. Stasis separation initialised.
Stasis separation.
Every microjoule of warmth leaves my body.
Run.