She touched the broadcasting mechanism at the top of her ear. “Docking bays aren’t pressurized, but the rest of the station is. Cold but tolerable without a pressure suit. Minimal but sufficient lighting.”
“Understood. See you soon.”
Colb would know the docking bays had been accessed. He wouldn’t know where she and the others were, though, or how many. And he wouldn’t be able to pick up their transmissions.
So far, she’d found no evidence of anyone being on the station. She’d expected to meet resistance in the form of some mercenaries or perhaps a team of subverted BlackOps once she got through the airlock. Either he was keeping his protection closer to his actual location, or he hadn’t trusted even his own flunkies to board Jamestown.
Peregrine and Hawk arrived with Wren. They quickly peeled off their pressure suits.
“You all in good shape?”
Hawk grinned. “No problem. The Roosevelt came in and gave us the royal treatment. Kind of nice, for a change. You?”
“Not even a little crispy.”
“You must be getting better.”
Wren ignored their byplay, going immediately to the systems displays when she got her suit off. Her hands flew over the controls, and for a few minutes, the rest of them could do little but wait. Fallon had never seen such take-charge intensity in Wren before.
Finally Wren twisted around to face them. “Colb has managed to get the station into lockdown mode, which reroutes all commands, even engineering, to crisis ops. I can’t make any changes from here.”
“Can you do it from another location?” Peregrine asked.
“Yes. Any mechanized system has moving parts that I can physically alter. I just have to get to them.”
Raptor’s voice came over the comport again, quieter this time. “He’s in lockdown mode. Crisis ops is like a fortress. Is there anything Wren can do?”
Fallon looked to her. Wren nodded, her mouth set in a determined line.
“We’re on our way,” Fallon said.
“Hand me the decoupler.” A minute later, Wren added, “Now the laser torch.”
Fallon waited in silence, encased in a small service conduit. As the smallest of the team, she’d been selected to serve as Wren’s assistant while the others scouted out the rest of the station. So far they hadn’t turned up a single person working for Colb. Unless he had someone locked inside crisis ops with him, he must have been too paranoid to trust anyone. Which was probably wise. Colb had as much interest as she did in preventing the public at large from finding out about the true state of affairs.
On the other hand, if he had no one to cover him, that worked just fine for Fallon.
“Think you could do something like when you busted Colb out of the brig?” Fallon asked Wren.
“Wow, thanks for reminding me about that. But unfortunately no. The Dragonfire brig was meant for keeping people from breaking out. We’ve got the opposite situation here.” Wren’s voice grew muffled halfway through.
Fallon knew that, but she’d hoped Wren could work some engineering magic for her. Plus, she’d grown tired of lying in a conduit listening to various scrapings and scufflings while Wren worked.
Wren grunted, and her feet shifted. “I can’t get it. Do you think you can squeeze up here and help me?”
“Maybe. I’ll have to crawl up over you. Probably won’t be comfortable for you.”
“Try it. I’ll be as flat as I can.”
Fallon turned onto her stomach and dragged herself up the conduit. Whoever had designed these things had not expected them to be accessed, it seemed. The security conduits on Dragonfire were cramped, but nothing like this.
She tried not to hurt Wren as she dragged herself over, then carefully lay on her. “Can you breathe?”
“Yes. You’re not that heavy.”
“This reminds me of going sledding with my brother when we were kids. I’d tickle you, but you’d probably thrash around and hurt us both.” Fallon spoke softly. Sound was already too loud in such a small space, and her mouth was right behind Wren’s head.
“Do you joke around this much when you’re on a mission with your team?”
“Yes, actually. It cuts the tension. Peregrine doesn’t joke as much as we do, but she’s…” She didn’t know how to finish that sentence in a way that wasn’t unflattering to Per.
“As much fun as a bag of dead kittens?” Wren supplied.
“Definitely more fun than that. So what am I supposed to be doing here? Or did you just want to get all horizontal with me?”
She felt Wren sigh in exasperation.
“See this?” Wren wrapped her fingers around an air-intake grate above her.
“Yep.”
“Help me pull it out.”
Air supply seemed like a dicey thing to tinker with. “Assuming we get it out, will we still be able to breathe?”
“Yes. For about two minutes. We need to get out of here and hit the emergency stop in the containment tank before the system detects contamination.”
Fallon kind of hated to ask the next question. “What happens if we don’t?”
“The system will recognize that the intake has been polluted and begin a decontamination cycle. Unfortunately that’d be pretty deadly for us, with the acid gas and all.” Wren seemed a little too chipper about explaining that.
“So let’s definitely not do that,” Fallon said.
“Agreed. Ready? On three. One…two…three.”
They pulled. It was difficult to get much strength behind the pull from a prone position reaching ahead of them. Fallon gave it everything she had and all at once the grate gave way, coming at them so fast it hit them both in the face. But there was no time to rub her smarting nose or her elbows where they’d smacked into unforgiving conduit. She scrambled over Wren into the tank, which was probably the last place she ever wanted to be on a space station.
Fallon had no choice but to slide down the wall of the tank on her stomach. She was sure she left a layer of skin on the hard metal as she went. On the bright side, it was crazy
