'Of course not,' said Random. 'How could you think such a thing of me?'
They smiled dryly at each other, and then the side of the pinnace opposite them exploded. An entire section of the hull disappeared, blown away by a direct hit from a disrupter cannon. The marines were sucked right out of the gaping hole, their security hooks ripped out of the steel floor in a moment, gone before they even had time to scream. New alarm sirens sounded, and red warning lights flashed as the cabin atmosphere boiled out the hull breach and the temperature plummeted.
The pinnace spun as it fell, spiraling toward the planet's surface as the pilot opened up the engines, struggling to outrun and outmaneuver the enemy's tracking systems. Random and Ruby struggled for air as the cabin pressure dropped, and breathing masks fell down from above them. They tried to reach for the masks, but their crash webbing was being sucked toward the hull breach, and it was all they could do to hang on. Random fought for air, and prayed the security hooks would hold. There was nothing he or Ruby could do till the ship fell deep enough into the planet's atmosphere to equalize the pressure.
Then he looked over at Ruby and saw her struggling to release the webbing. He called out to her, but she wouldn't listen. The straps finally let go, and she lurched out onto the slippery steel floor, clinging to a nearby stanchion with fingers like claws. She let go with one hand and grabbed a steel gun locker on the wall. It was almost as wide as it was tall, and had to weigh the best part of a ton. Ruby ripped it off the wall, and with an effort that tore an agonized silent scream from her, she threw the locker in the direction of the hull breach, which sucked it into place, neatly covering the gap in the hull.
The cabin air pressure quickly reestablished itself, and Random fought his way out of his crash webbing and rushed over to hold the locker in place. Ruby was quickly at his side, blood dripping from her nose, with a hand welder she'd found in a tool box. It took only a few moments to seal the locker securely in place, and then they both collapsed onto the floor, their backs propped against the bulkhead. They were both breathing hard, but from effort now rather than asphixiation.
'Nice throw,' Random said finally.
'Thanks,' said Ruby. 'Nice catch.'
'You stay put and take it easy for a moment. I'll go have a word with the pilot.'
Ruby nodded wearily, and gingerly massaged her aching shoulder as Random forced himself to his feet and stumbled down the aisle to the front of the pinnace. Neither the pilot nor the Sergeant looked around as Random joined them.
'That had to be a disrupter cannon,' said Random, with a hand on the back of each of their chairs to steady himself. 'Is there somebody up here with us?'
'I don't think so,' said the Sergeant. 'Sensors would have detected another ship, even in all this crap. Must be landbased.'
'Then Shub must have supplied it,' said Random. 'There was nothing in the files to indicate the human traitors had access to that kind of weaponry.'
'Well, they do now,' said the pilot. 'And we're a sitting duck up here. It's only the weather and the turbulence that's keeping them from locking on for another shot.'
'Do we have any energy shields?' said Random, leaning over the Sergeant's shoulder to try to make sense of the control panels. There seemed to be a hell of a lot of warning lights flashing.
'No. Engines need all their power to fight the storms. And our armor was never intended to cope with energy weapons. Pilot, can you get us down any faster?'
The pilot opened his mouth to say something cutting, and then the window before him exploded into shrapnel as the pinnace took another direct hit. A hundred steelglass shards slammed into and through the pilot in a second, killing him instantly. Air rushed out through the window break. Random, having learned, pulled the nearest steel locker off the wall and plugged up the gap fairly neatly, and the air pressure stabilized again.
The engines whined as the pinnace dropped like a stone. Random hauled the dead pilot out of his seat, fastened himself in the command chair and studied the controls. They were a lot nearer the surface than he'd thought, but it was still a hell of a long way down. With no hand at the helm, sky and cloud and snatches of surface swept back and forth before the unblocked steelglass window. Random cleaned the controls of blood as best he could, being very careful not to activate anything till he was sure what it did. He looked across at the Sergeant in the copilot's seat, but even as he started to ask for help, he realized Miller was slumped forward, unmoving. Random reached out and pulled the Sargeant back in his chair. Miller's head rolled back, and he stared sightlessly up at the cabin ceiling, a large steelglass fragment protruding from one bloody eyesocket.
'Dead as a doornail,' said Ruby, moving into view beside Random. 'Our luck is running true to form.'
'Haul his ass out of that chair and take his place,' said Random. 'I'm going to need your help to land this thing.'
Ruby pulled Miller's body out of the chair and dumped it on the deck. She took over the co-pilot's seat and then looked over at Random. 'You have flown one of these things before, haven't you, Jack?'
'Do you want the bad news or the really bad news?'
'Oh, shit.'
'That just about sums it up. Those two disrupter hits did a lot of damage to the steering. And if I'm interpreting these controls correctly, we have associational damage too. Engine power is dropping, one of the main air tanks is ruptured, and the landing computers are shot to shit. Apart from that, putting this unfamiliar craft down in unknown territory in a never ending storm should be a piece of cake. Any questions?'
'Just one. Where did the Sergeant say those parachutes were?'
'Forget it. There's enough lightning out there to turn you into a cinder before you could even pull the ripcord.'
'Escape pods? Gravity sleds?'
'In a ship this size? Hey, wait a minute…
Ruby looked at him sharply. 'I really didn't like the way you said that. What is it now?'
'Half the controls just shut down. Shrapnel from the window has riddled the main computers. We are now running entirely on backup systems. If I try to cut in the manual controls, this heap of shit will drop like a rock. It's only the few remaining automatic systems that are keeping the engines going.'
'Oh,
'Exactly. We are currently plummeting toward the surface of an unknown planet in a crippled ship we can't control, with all the glide factor of half a brick with a nail in it. Feel free to chime in if you have any bright ideas that don't include divine intervention.'
'So what are we going to do? Come on, Random, you're the expert strategist. Think of a way out of this mess.'
'Strategies require options, and we don't seem to have any. We're just going to have to trust what's left of the onboard computers to crash us as gently as possible.'
'We can't be that helpless! We're Maze people, dammit! Superhumans!'
'Unfortunately, none of our abilities are any use in this situation. But we should be able to survive a crash that would kill anyone else. Hell, when I attacked the pastel towers back on Golgotha, they shot my gravity sled out of the sky and then set fire to me, and I still walked away from it.'
Ruby stared at the useless controls before her. 'There has to be something we can do. Something to improve our chances.'
'There is,' Random said suddenly. 'Give me a hand.'
He hit his strap releases and surged up out of his chair, his face alight with inspiration. He staggered up the slanted central aisle of the shaking ship, and started pulling loose all the remaining chairs and lockers. Ruby hurried after him, new hope in her heart.
'What is it? What have you thought of, Jack?'
'A cocoon. We're going to build a barricade around ourselves, layers of steel and padding, and hope it absorbs most of the impact on landing. Give me a hand here. We've only got a few minutes left before we hit.'
Ruby joined him, tearing attachments loose. Everything that wasn't an actual part of the deck or the hull ended up part of the many layers of barricade at the front of the cabin. Finally they ran out of junk and time, and retreated into the heart of the cocoon. They'd left just enough room for the two of them to force their way in, and they sat together in each other's arms, wedged together so tightly they could barely breathe. The alarm sirens had blended into a single hysterical tone now, and the red emergency lighting had given everything the color of blood.
