She fought her way across the hangar floor, keeping as low as she could. There were still dark flakes zinging through the thinning air, twigs and leaves and small fibrous tubules torn from the arkship biotechnology, each one with a punch like a cage fighter when it struck her.
Yuri started firing his pistol along the corridor when she was still thirty metres away.
The edge of the entrance next to him blew apart in a cascade of rock shards as it was hit by energetic gunfire from somewhere within. Yuri went sprawling, then rolled smoothly back into a crouch, pistol held steady on the corridor.
Like he’s done it before, Kandara thought admiringly. She lurched for cover amid a tangle of broken pipe tubes that were swaying alarmingly, bringing the carbine around ready. The jet of mist roaring out of the corridor started to fluctuate, its subtle fluorescence dimming. A quint was bumping along the corridor wall, legs skittering frantically on the rock floor while its manipulator flesh surged out in thick pseudopods, trying to grapple onto the wall’s undulating pipe trunks and fluttering creeper fronds, but the malleable translucent flesh wasn’t strong enough to hold the quint’s weight against the tremendous force of the atmospheric tsunami howling into the hungry vacuum beyond. One protuberance still held a weapon, which it was trying to aim at the still smouldering corridor entrance close to Yuri.
‘Mine,’ she bellowed. The carbine’s slender orange target graphics splashed into her tarsus lens, and she brought the weapon around carefully, tracking . . . She fired straight into the quint’s manipulator flesh, searing it deep. In response the flesh cratered as it tried to avoid the burn. She moved the carbine a fraction, scorching again, each time ruining more of the manipulator flesh.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Yuri demanded. ‘Go headshot. Kill the bastard!’
‘I am killing it,’ she growled. ‘But not the nice way.’
Another salvo of accurate maser shots, and the crippled, smouldering manipulator flesh lost its grip. The quint body was ripped off the wall by the torrent of air, tumbling crazily, legs still kicking.
Kandara stood up, bracing herself against the wind, and gave it an almighty forearm jerk. Yeah, you saw that. You know. I did this. I finished you, fucker. Me!
The quint body slammed through the hangar entrance, smacking into the rock several times as it went. Kandara never even flinched at the brutal impacts.
‘Happy now?’ Jessika asked.
‘Oh, Mother Mary, yes. I truly am.’ She saw Jessika and Callum still clinging together and started crawling over to them. Three of the unruly atmosphere jets were between them.
‘Don’t move,’ Jessika said. ‘We’re okay.’
‘Right.’ She started to look for a safer route. But they all involved climbing up the wall and crabbing her way over the tunnel entrances mere centimetres from the jets. Crap.
‘They’re fading,’ Yuri said.
‘What?’
‘Look. The pressure’s dropping.’
Sure enough, the jets started to shrink, losing their vigour. Within a minute they had finished. The hangar was in a vacuum.
‘Finally,’ Jessika said. ‘Some health and safety protocols.’
Kandara started towards them. She only got a few paces before realization hit and she stopped, scanning around. ‘Aww, Mary! No.’ Alik’s body was nowhere to be seen. He’d been blasted out into space.
She thought she might cry again, but there was nothing. No emotion. Either her gland reigned supreme, or the sheer intensity of everything that had happened had scoured her clean of feelings forever.
When she finally got over to Jessika and Callum, Yuri was already there. Everyone was examining Callum’s arm.
‘It’s okay,’ he insisted. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Yeah, you will be,’ Yuri said. ‘It’s not serious.’
‘What?’
Kandara chuckled drily at the indignation in the old man’s voice. She suspected he wanted to argue with Yuri, make the universe right again.
‘But . . .’ Yuri said. ‘I am concerned about maintaining the suit integrity. That patch is medical. It’s not supposed to repair a rip like that in a vacuum. So keep as still as possible. I’m going to wrap another patch on top, then we need to get back to the cavern. The initiators can extrude something better for you until the human invasion fleet arrives.’
‘Not arguing,’ Callum said. He didn’t even object to Jessika helping him slowly to his feet as he held his arm out stiffly.
Kandara slung the maser back over her shoulder and loaded one of the spare clips of wyst bullets into her magpistol. Only one clip left now. Callum’s powerblade machete was hanging off his belt. She unclipped it and fastened it to her own.
‘What are you doing?’ Yuri asked.
‘Haven’t you been counting?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Odd Quint. Quint. There’s five of it. We only took out four bodies.’ She pointed at the tunnel the first quint had gone into. ‘That one never came back.’
‘We’re in a vacuum,’ Jessika said. ‘They’re tough, but they still need to breathe.’
‘And yet here we are,’ she snapped. ‘I’d be worried if maybe we were in a spaceship, you know – the kind of vehicle that would carry some piece of equipment that allows quint to survive in a vacuum. Sort of a: space? Suit?’
‘You know what’s on the other side of whatever emergency door is up there, don’t you?’ Yuri said. ‘Every quint on the Salvation of Life – and all of them are going to be very keen to find out if we survived.’
‘Yeah?’ Kandara patted the carbine. ‘Well, they’re about to discover the hard way.’
‘Please,’ Jessika said. ‘Don’t do this. We’ve won. I can see it in the onemind thoughtstream; the human ships are so close now. And you know Alik wouldn’t want you to do this.’
‘Cheap shot.’
‘But true,’ Callum said.
Kandara stood completely still. The vacuum around her had taken away all the subtle noises that she normally never noticed, making the sound of her heart implausibly loud inside her helmet. It was a fast beat. She desperately wanted to eliminate the last of Odd Quint’s bodies. So I do still have feelings, even if they are only vengeance and anger. ‘I’ll just check the tunnel. Okay? That’s all. I won’t go
