Vara scrabbled uselessly with her paws, trying to paddle her way across the tunnel. We were barely a meter from the lip of the shuttle door.
“Danny!” Dalton cried and thrust out his right arm to point in the direction I hadn’t been looking.
I snapped my head around.
A small ship, so small I suspected it to be a one-man fighting craft, hovered thirty meters away, sitting between the Ige Ibas and the shuttle. A dozen more of the little craft were screaming in to form up behind it.
The front of the craft was a clear, flat canopy, giving the pilot an unobstructed three-sixty degree view of what lay ahead of him.
And I could see him, too. Or her.
Or it.
It was bipedal and stood upright, with two arms reaching toward controls in front of it. I couldn’t see what it had for hands. The entire creature was encased in a shiny carapace that glinted very dark blue in the light from the rising sun. Its head was truly alien, with an elongated snout that ended in a circular mouth that showed a red interior, and teeth around the edge in two concentric circles. Sharp, angular spines rose up in a line over the high head, and disappeared behind. The eyes were enormous and blank.
The thing worked the controls in front of it while I floated with my mouth open, my heart pistoning overtime.
Something shot out from a maw in the craft’s fuselage beneath the front window, trailing a line.
I didn’t know what the thing or the line were for, but primitive instincts gibbered in fear. I could feel my teeth trying to chatter.
The thing at the end of the line had intelligence. I watched it change directions as I tried to paddle my way over to the shuttle, just like Vara. I’d lost all good sense. I tried to pull myself together, to act smart. But all I wanted to do was get inside the shuttle, shut the door and curl up in the corner. Maybe wrap my arms over my head like Ophir.
The little boy was screaming and pounding his fists against Fiori’s shoulder. His eyes were so wide and so filled with primordial fear that a clear border of white showed around the irises.
The thing on the end of the line pushed through the molecular barrier and I held my breath, waiting for the air to evaporate, but the barrier held.
The thing shot toward Fiori, who had just reached the ship, and whipped itself around her ankle. The line snapped taut, jerking her away from the ship.
Now I knew what the thing was for.
As soon as Fiori felt the tug on her ankle, she wrenched Ophir away from her and threw him at the open door of the shuttle. The little boy sailed through the meter of space until the gravity of the shuttle caught him and sent him rolling across the interior floor.
Dalton gripped the edge of the door with one hand and shoved Darb into the pull of the gravity. Then he slapped his other hand over Fiori’s wrist and hauled against the pull of the line.
I had nothing to hang on to, to push Vara forward. All we could do was float slowly toward the shuttle. Any attempt to swim faster would push us backward.
Vara yipped and growled in high, frightened notes, which didn’t help stop my teeth from chattering.
Fiori reached for Dalton with her other hand, her eyes as huge as Ophir’s. She was being drawn inexorably backward by the line. The alien controlling it watched us struggle with what looked like utter disinterest.
“Nearly there!” Lyssa cried from the speakers.
Vara was slightly ahead of me and the shuttle’s gravity field extended a half meter from the ship itself. Vara scrambled as she felt the pull of gravity, trying to move faster.
I was close enough now that I could reach out and grab Dalton’s boot, and haul myself up the length of his body. I hooked my knee over his, anchoring myself. “Don’t let go,” I told him.
“Hurry,” he said through gritted teeth. The tendons in his neck were standing out as he strained to hang on to Fiori.
I unhooked the torrent shriver and raised it. “Everyone, be ready. The tunnel is going to collapse.”
I aimed right at the motherfucker’s face. He had to see what I was doing, but he didn’t seem concerned about it.
I didn’t hesitate. I fired, holding the trigger down, so the shriver fired continuously.
The molecular barrier collapsed with a popping sound.
Wind screamed at us from the interior of the shuttle, before the barrier could form over the open doorway and hold it in.
A pad—I think it was mine—whipped through the door with the speed of a percussion bullet and shot passed my arm.
I felt the sharp sting and even sharper cold of absolute vacuum.
I blew out my breath—one of the hardest things a spacer had to learn to do, because it went against the survival instinct.
The alien ship lit up with blue fire dancing over every surface. The pilot convulsed.
The craft drifted sideways, burning merrily.
The line around Fiori’s leg grew slack. Her head lay inside the barrier, her body hung from the door.
I shoved her through the door, and she scrambled away from it on her hands and knees.
Dalton gripped my elbow and hauled me into the ship.
As soon as I had gravity under me, I jammed my boot on the floor and pulled him in after me.
I shut the door as soon as he was inside and threw myself into the copilot chair.
I felt dizzy from the exposure to vacuum, but fear kept me grounded enough to do what had to be done.
“Lyssa!” I cried.
“I’m nearly to you!”
Fiori leaned over the back of my chair, pawing at my arm.
“I’m trying to get us out of here!” I wrenched my arm away from her.
“You’re bleeding! Lemme at it. I have to staunch it.”
“Dalton!” I shouted. If I couldn’t get us out of here, he had to.
“On it!”
He didn’t
