“Nothing personal, friend,” he said, “but your investigative techniques aren’t impressing me. What makes you think you can find her?”
“It’s not a fair test,” Dawes said. “Give me a few days, I’ll get answers for you.”
“Talk to me then. I’ll try not to start an all-out war while you do, but I’m not letting go of Julie. You can go now.”
Dawes rose. He looked sour.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said.
“Won’t be my first.”
After the man left, Miller sat at his table. He’d been stupid. Worse, he’d been self-indulgent. Drinking himself into a stupor instead of doing the work. Instead of finding Julie. But he knew more now. The
He cleaned away his bottles, took a shower, and pulled up his terminal, searching what there was about Julie’s ship. After an hour, a new thought occurred to him, a small fear that grew the more he looked at it. Near midnight, he put a call through to Havelock’s hole.
His partner took two full minutes to answer. When he did, his image was wild-haired and bleary-eyed.
“Miller?”
“Havelock. You have any vacation time saved up?”
“A little.”
“Sick leave?”
“Sure,” Havelock said.
“Take it,” Miller said. “Take it now. Get off station. Someplace safe if you can find it. Someplace they’re not going to start killing Earthers for shits and giggles if things go pear-shaped.”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“I had a little visit with an OPA agent tonight. He was trying to talk me into dropping my kidnap job. I think… I think he’s nervous. I think he’s scared.”
Havelock was silent for a moment while the words filtered into his sleep-drunk mind.
“Jesus,” he said. “What scares the OPA?”
Chapter Thirteen: Holden
Holden froze, watching the blood pump from Shed’s neck, then whip away like smoke into an exhaust fan. The sounds of combat began to fade as the air was sucked out of the room. His ears throbbed and then hurt like someone had put ice picks in them. As he fought with his couch restraints, he glanced over at Alex. The pilot was yelling something, but it didn’t carry through the thin air. Naomi and Amos had gotten out of their couches already, kicked off, and were flying across the room to the two holes. Amos had a plastic dinner tray in one hand. Naomi, a white three-ring binder. Holden stared at them for the half second it took to understand what they were doing. The world narrowed, his peripheral vision all stars and darkness.
By the time he’d gotten free, Amos and Naomi had already covered the holes with their makeshift patches. The room was filled with a high-pitched whistle as the air tried to force its way out through the imperfect seals. Holden’s sight began to return as the air pressure started to rise. He was panting hard, gasping for breath. Someone slowly turned the room’s volume knob back up and Naomi’s yells for help became audible.
“Jim, open the emergency locker!” she screamed.
She was pointing at a small red-and-yellow panel on the bulkhead near his crash couch. Years of shipboard training made a path through the anoxia and depressurization, and he yanked the tab on the locker’s seal and pulled the door open. Inside were a white first aid kit marked with the ancient red-cross symbol, half a dozen oxygen masks, and a sealed bag of hardened plastic disks attached to a glue gun. The emergency-seal kit. He snatched it.
“Just the gun,” Naomi yelled at him. He wasn’t sure if her voice sounded distant because of the thin air or because the pressure drop had blown his eardrums.
Holden yanked the gun free from the bag of patches and threw it at her. She ran a bead of instant sealing glue around the edge of her three-ring binder. She tossed the gun to Amos, who caught it with an effortless backhand motion and put a seal around his dinner tray. The whistling stopped, replaced by the hiss of the atmosphere system as it labored to bring the pressure back up to normal. Fifteen seconds.
Everyone looked at Shed. Without the vacuum, his blood was pouring out into a floating red sphere just above his neck, like a hideous cartoon replacement for his head.
“Jesus Christ, Boss,” Amos said, looking away from Shed to Naomi. He snapped his teeth closed with an audible click and shook his head. “What… ”
“Gauss round,” Alex said. “Those ships have rail guns.”
“
“Jim, the hallway outside and the cabin on the other side are both in vacuum,” Naomi said. “The ship’s compromised.”
Holden started to respond, then caught a good look at the binder Naomi had glued over the breach. The white cover was stamped with black letters that read MCRN EMERGENCY PROCEDURES. He had to suppress a laugh that would almost certainly go manic on him.
“Jim,” Naomi said, her voice worried.
“I’m okay, Naomi,” Holden replied, then took a deep breath. “How long do those patches hold?”
Naomi shrugged with her hands, then started pulling her hair behind her head and tying it up with a red elastic band.
“Longer than the air will last. If everything around us is in vacuum, that means the cabin’s running on emergency bottles. No recycling. I don’t know how much each room has, but it won’t be more than a couple hours.”
“Kinda makes you wish we’d worn our fucking suits, don’t it?” Amos asked.
“Wouldn’t have mattered,” Alex said. “We’d come over here in our enviro suits, they’d just have taken ’em away.”
“Could have tried,” Amos said.
“Well, if you’d like to go back in time and do it over, be my guest, partner.”
Naomi sharply said, “Hey,” but then nothing more.
No one was talking about Shed. They were working hard not to look at the body. Holden cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention, then floated to Shed’s couch, drawing their eyes with him. He paused a moment, letting everyone get a good look at the decapitated body, then pulled a blanket from the storage drawer beneath the couch and strapped it down over Shed’s body with the couch’s restraints.
“Shed’s been killed. We’re in deep peril. Arguing won’t extend our lives one second,” Holden said, looking at each member of his crew in turn. “What will?”
No one spoke. Holden turned to Naomi first.
“Naomi, what will keep us alive longer that we can do right now?” he asked.
“I’ll see if I can find the emergency air. The room’s built for six, and there’re only… there are four of us. I might be able to turn the flow down and stretch it longer.”
“Good. Thank you. Alex?”
“If there’s anyone other than us, they’ll be lookin’ for survivors. I’ll start poundin’ on the bulkhead. They won’t hear it in the vacuum, but if there’re cabins with air, the sound’ll travel down the metal.”
“Good plan. I refuse to believe we’re the only ones left on this ship,” Holden said, then turned to Amos. “Amos?”
“Lemme check on that comm panel. Might be able to get the bridge or damage control or… shit,
“Thanks. I’d love to let someone know we’re still here,” Holden said.
People moved off to work while Holden floated in the air next to Shed. Naomi began yanking access panels off
