“It’s a control panel,” Yoan said. “To control the cryogenic shells?” he guessed, glancing over his shoulder.
I shook my head. The silent voice at the back of my mind was screaming at me, now. I looked up at the transparent layer of the wall in front of me. “Why do I keep thinking of their one-man fighters?” I breathed.
Then I gasped as everything dropped into place, with the same ease with which the key had seated itself in the lock.
At the same time, Calpurnia shouted, out in the corridor. “Incoming!” And the gun she had gave a soft cough. And another.
We were under fire.
—35—
I almost bounced over to the door, where Calpurnia hugged the double layers and bent around them to fire the gun.
Now I knew why the doors had two layers, too.
I yelled at Calpurnia, “Situation!”
She was an ex-Ranger and responded as ordered. “Three of them, around the corner. They jumped back when they saw me. They’ll call for reinforcements. We need to move.”
I agreed with her. “Can you keep them pinned down? We need to look in the other rooms!”
She glanced at me, startled. Then she grimaced. “If you must.” She raised the gun and it coughed its ball of destruction again. The ball glanced off the corner and buried itself in the wall on the other side, then exploded, sending up sparks and flames. “The corner is on the same side as us, which works against them. Just make it fast.”
I waved Yoan to me. “Give me the key.”
He handed over the flashlight key.
“What are you doing, Danny?” Dalton demanded, getting to his feet.
“I’m looking for the rest of the Ige Ibas crew,” I told him. “They might still be alive.”
“Colonel…” Calpurnia said, her tone urgent.
I waited for her to fire once more then slid along the wall to the next room’s door recess, slapped the door panel the way Sauli had, and looked inside, but didn’t really need to, for the aroma was enough to tell me this room held more of the crew.
It was the last room on this side. I looked across the corridor and my heart spiked when I saw that Dalton was already there. He slapped the door open as I looked, glanced in, shut the door and shook his head. Then he dived and rolled, back to the doorway Calpurnia was protecting.
I went into my room and worked to unlock the shells of the survivors. “Just hold on,” I urged them, and lifted them out and laid them on the ground. Before I was done, Juliyana, Lyth and Marlow came in.
“Take them into the other room,” I shouted, working on the last shell.
“Why?” Marlow demanded.
“Just do it,” Juliyana snapped at him, and bent to pick up the nearest survivor.
Lyth bent silently to do the same. The survivors were so emaciated that they could easy pick up one by themselves. There were only four in this room. I picked up the last myself and hugged the corridor wall between this room and the other, carried them in and laid them on the crowded floor of the other.
I moved over to the control panel next to Calpurnia’s back and pulled out the key and jammed it in the lock on the panel. The panel lit up. Yoan crowded up next to me.
“How do I lock the inner doors?” I asked him.
“Inner doors?” he repeated, but he was already leaning forward, examining the controls. As he reached for the panel, I said to Calpurnia, “Be ready to step back.”
She nodded as she fired again. “Their backup has arrived,” she warned me, as the stream of exploding balls intensified. Crackling and popping, and the volley of fire was deafening.
Yoan prodded.
The doors instantly slid shut. Calpurnia stepped back smartly, bringing the gun up and out of the way as the doors slammed shut.
“And lock them,” I told Yoan, and spun to head for the dashboard. “Lyth! Sauli!” I beckoned them.
“Locked!” Yoan cried. “I think,” he added in a lower voice.
Sauli and Lyth gathered around me by the dashboard.
“Lyth, you’re the pilot. Figure out how to pilot this thing.”
Sauli gasped. “This is a shuttle!”
I nodded. “The whole room. That wall is the screen over the front. They stand up when they pilot, these guys.” I stepped out of the way. “They’re efficient, with their slaves,” I reminded them. “They don’t even bother moving them in and out of shuttles. They just keep them in the shuttles all the time.”
Lyth peered at the dashboard.
“You can’t guess right first time,” Sauli told him. “You have to experiment. Everything that doesn’t work will tell you something.”
Lyth quickly moved his fingers over the dashboard. It rewarded him by flashing lights and making chirps that sounded like confirmation notes. The center of the panel was a screen of some kind, for information was displayed there. It wasn’t a language that I recognized. “Symbols?” I murmured to Sauli.
“Yes,” Lyth confirmed, his tone distant.
“Why not use labels and save the guessing?”
“Aren’t you glad they don’t use labels?” Sauli said, raising his brow at me. “We’d be sunk, if they did.”
“Symbols cut across communications barriers,” Jai said, making me start. I hadn’t noticed him come up behind us. “Maybe these people don’t have a default dialect.”
Behind him, I heard the sound of muffled fire. Calpurnia and Juliyana stood at the door, their heads down, listening. Juliyana held her palm to the door. That would tell her if the door was heating, overheating, or worse, melting.
“We have to get this thing away from the mothership before they drill a hole through the door and we lose our atmosphere integrity,” I told Lyth.
“No pressure or nothin’,” Sauli added.
Lyth didn’t answer. He moved his fingertips over the dash, frowning. Then his frown cleared. He pressed both hands to the dash.
The floor beneath me gave a distinct thud. The doors Juliyana stood next to made a similar sound.
“We’re sealed in,” I guessed.
The floor began to vibrate and more symbols
