“Fine, then at least secure yourself,” the Caretaker snapped.
Amusingly, and conveniently, enough, that was exactly what she needed to do anyway for her plan to work. She hastily made her way over to the bulkhead at the side of the room and clipped her belt carabiner to a loop there.
Then she turned, reaching behind her back as if to keep her balance. “Ali.”
The Caretaker turned, giving her a somewhat impatient look. “Excuse me, I need to focus right now.”
Lana nodded, keeping her expression helpful. “I'm ready in case of trouble,” she said. “But what about you? The Deeks could hit this room at any time.”
The Caretaker gave her a reassuring smile. “I can survive vacuum, and should be able to brace for explosive decompression in the moment. Until that time, I must keep working.”
“Understood,” Lana said, still screaming in horror inside her mind. This wasn't her, this wasn't her!
Keeping her movements appropriately casual for the fact that they might blow up at any moment, she drew the gunner's cauterizer from where she'd tucked it at the small of her back, concealed beneath her shirt, and held it out of the Caretaker's line of sight. Working blindly with just one hand, she dialed its power up to the highest setting, one that threatened to melt the weapon's focusing mechanism if she wasn't careful.
She couldn't aim for the AI without engaging its self-defense priorities, but she could aim for the wall to her left without it seeing.
The one that opened out into space.
The first shot punched a big enough hole to immediately start a gale as the room began explosively decompressing. The second and third shots widened it enough that the gale became a hurricane, snatching loose objects up and blowing them out into the void.
Including Lana, who was secured, and the AI, who wasn't.
But somehow, miraculously, the Caretaker managed to snag a control with a single finger. It didn't look like nearly enough to anchor it against explosive decompression, but somehow it held on as it reached for a better hold with its free hand.
At least until Lana, struggling to keep hold of the cauterizer so it didn't fly out into space with everything else, shot the Caretaker twice in the arm with precision that should've been impossible for her. The fake human barely had time to stare at her with wide eyes, expression conveying betrayal and a plea to know why, before it was yanked across the room by the hurricane of escaping air.
It slammed into the hole, which was too small for it, and for another moment it seemed it would get wedged against the bulkhead. Then the air pressure crumpled the Caretaker into itself, and as it grasped futilely at nothing with its remaining hand it was forced through and sent flying spinning into the void.
* * * * *
Dalar worked in a frenzied panic to get the shields operational again, breath hissing frantically inside his uniform's emergency helmet. Small silver lining, at least the hull breach that had slagged the critical system had also blown the choking smoke out into space.
He was just lucky it hadn't blown him out, as well. Or more accurately, his foresight in clipping himself to the wall for the battle had saved him; no one had ever accused Jian Dalar of being unprepared for disaster.
“We're taking hits to the engine's last resort shields, Dalar!” the engines officer screamed in his ear through his headset. “Where are our shields?”
“Slagged beyond repair!” he snapped back. “The better question is, where is our pilot and gunner?” The Dormant had taken out the pirate ship's shields at pretty much the start of the battle, and yet the fools on the bridge had yet to take advantage of that enormous advantage and destroy their enemy.
What was Bresac doing? For once he wasn't cursing the plain woman's stolid competency, and was in fact desperately hoping she'd shine like she never had before. Even if it meant she won all the praise for this victory.
The engines officer abruptly screamed, then the comms went alarmingly silent. A violent shudder spread through the ship, and the lurching of evasive maneuvering vanished. Had the engines just been knocked out, too?
Dalar keyed his comms to the bridge frequency. “What are you idiots doing?” he demanded. “We're sitting ducks now. Blow them up! Blow th-”
He winced at a painful burst of feedback in his ears as his comms were squelched. Probably by Bresac, the hateful plodding cow.
With no other options available to him, he stood in the vacuum of the devastated shields room and closed his eyes, struggling to remain calm as disbelief overwhelmed him.
How was this possible? They'd entered this fight with every advantage, and in spite of that the Last Stand was swatting them aside with almost contemptuous ease. They couldn't be about to lose, could they?
He couldn't die. He was Jian Dalar, hero of the Deconstructionist Movement. This wasn't how he went out.
It wasn't!
* * * * *
Aiden winced as if he'd been punched in the face as his ship shuddered around him; to be fair, as far as he was concerned any damage to the old girl was as bad as personal injury.
“Direct hit to our railgun,” the gunner said, tone clipped and terse. “Enemy shields and engines down, continuing to target engines to slag their reactor.”
Well, at least they hit the weapon that was already out of ammo and useless, Aiden thought grimly. You had to look on the bright side. Of course, now the railgun would remain useless even after they fabricated more slugs, but they wouldn't have to worry about that if they didn't survive this battle.
Bright side. Better to focus on that than on his failure to stay ahead of the enemy's shots; maybe he should've had the gunner go for the weapons before going for the kill, but they'd been
