encountered another sailor. 'Santiago?'
'Uh, no, sir. Petty Officer Yousef. Back-up hose.'
The big bosun mate, then. 'Probably the only time you've ever been confused with Santiago, isn't it?'
'You got that, sir. She's right in front of me.'
Paul slid forward even more cautiously, half-afraid of being partly boiled himself and half-afraid of shoving Santiago back into the torch that had already injured her. The fog from Yousef's hose cooled the air around him, beating back some of the smoke as well, so he actually caught a glimpse of Santiago's suit just before his hand reached her. 'Santiago, it's Sinclair. Where's the torch?'
'I'm aimed right at it, sir.'
Paul moved sideways around her, keeping as close to Santiago as possible without bumping into her. He felt heat beating at the side nearest the fuel leak and realized Santiago had been fronting that heat for several minutes, now. 'How are you doing?'
'I'm okay, sir. I can hold out a bit longer. How much do we have to cool that fuel before it stops flamin'?'
'Uh… I don't know.' Paul studied his suit's tell tales. 'It is cooling.'
'Yeah. Real slow. Maybe I should go solid stream? Break it up?'
'No!' Paul had a vision of a solid column of water hitting the flaming fuel and casting it all directions like a bomb. 'Just keep cooling the base. DC Central, can you copy my suit readings?'
'Affirmative, sir.'
'Are we getting anywhere close to cooling down that fuel enough?'
'Sir, I think so, but — '
'Wait.' On Paul's telltales, the torch heat readings had suddenly plunged, then jerked up again. 'What was that?'
'It flickered, sir. You're getting there.'
Santiago hunched forward a little more. 'Santiago! Don't get too close!'
'I'm gonna put this bastard out, sir. Don't worry. I can handle this.'
'Yousef! Get a little closer to Santiago! Cover her.'
'Yes, sir.' The fog from the back-up hose thickened a bit as Yousef followed Paul's orders.
Another plunge in torch temperature, another climb, then two more plunges in quick succession. 'You're getting it, Santiago.' A final plunge and it stayed lower. It took Paul a moment to realize that drop in temperature was still far too high. 'Keep your hose on it, Santiago. Yousef, get up here and train your hose directly on the leak as well. I need a patch up here!'
'Aye, sir. Patch coming.' Moments later, two suits came past, feeling their way over Paul, Santiago and Yousef, then vanishing into the murk. 'Son of a bitch.'
'What?' Paul leaned forward as if that would help him see.
'Sorry, sir. That's one nasty hole, and I'm getting fuel all over me feeling it out. Hey, Tatyana, gimme the half-meter square patch and get a brace ready.' Silence followed for a few moments, except for an occasional grunt. 'Yeah. Gimme the end of the brace… okay, it's set. I'll hold it while you tension it.' In his mind's eye, Paul could see the other hull technician spinning the tensioner on the brace, lengthening it until it held the patch firmly in place. 'Okay. Lemme kick it. Yeah. That's tight. I got some patching goo around the edge and it seems to be holding. Looks like we got that leak, sir.'
'Great. Thanks. DC Central, you copy?'
'Affirmative. We've begun draining fuel from that tank. Are there still flames elsewhere in the compartment? We've lost all sensors.'
Paul tried to imagine how bad it had been to kill every sensor in Forward Engineering, then slowly looked around, watching his suit's telltales shift as the temperatures he faced varied. 'I think there's still some burning going on. We'll try to knock it down. Is there any way you can get the smoke pumped out of here so we can see what we're doing?'
'Not yet, sir. Based upon your suit readings the stuff in there is too thick to run through our ship purifiers without clogging them. We've got a mass air purifier heading this way, but it's still a few minutes out. Then they'll have to run the suction tube down to you and hook it up.'
'Great. Santiago, Yousef, everybody else. Let's head for the hottest spot and try to break the fire up.'
'Aye, aye, sir.' Santiago moved about a meter, then stopped. 'What the — Madre de Dios.'
'Santiago? What's the problem?'
'I… I think I maybe found Chief Asher, sir.'
Paul eased up beside her, then bent slowly through the still dense smoke until an object lying on the deck suddenly came into view less than an inch from his face shield. He jerked back at the sight, fighting down a tight feeling in his throat.
'You think that's him, sir?'
'It… it could be.' Maybe a leg, maybe an arm. Heat and corrosive fuel, perhaps on top of whatever damage the explosion had done, had left very little to tell for sure. Don't throw up. Don't throw up. Think about something else.
'Lieutenant Sinclair?'
'Yeah!' The reply was too shrill, too stressed. Paul forced himself to speak more calmly. 'Yes. Who's this?'
'Lieutenant Candon, off the Midway. We've almost got an airlock rigged. May I respectfully suggest you pull your team back and let one of the other damage control teams handle mop up?'
Paul licked his lips, fighting down what he knew was an irrational urge to ignore Candon's advice. But Santiago had been injured, he recalled with a guilty start, and everyone was exhausted from the heat. He checked the blinking warning against suit failure. Putting out the torch had eliminated the firestorm, but the heat was still intense enough to keep the warning fluctuating around perhaps a half hour's time remaining before suit systems might start being overwhelmed. It would take them a good portion of that time just to exit the compartment. 'Yes. I think that's a good idea. Uh, we've got fuel on our suits.'
'I understand you have fuel on your suits. We've set up a washdown system inside the airlock. Wait one.' Paul waited for a moment, one hand on Santiago's shoulder and the other on Yousef's. 'The air rig tube is here. They're mating it to the vent now. You should have some visibility by the time you get back this way.'
'Understand air venting will start soon. Chief Imari? Is Lieutenant Silver still up there?' Paul found himself frowning as he asked the question, only now realizing he'd heard nothing from Silver since leaving the quarterdeck.
'Yes, sir, he is.'
'Does he know our status and that we plan on pulling out now?'
'Yes, sir.'
Paul waited again, but nothing more followed. I guess he's okay with it, then. 'All right, everybody, change of plans. Somebody else will cool down those hot spots. We're out of here. Fall back slowly to the hatch.' The catwalk quivered some more as Paul made his way back, first Yousef and then Santiago coming after him, their nozzles still trained toward the strongest sources of heat. There is going to be one major effort required to get all that water recovered so it can reused.
Conserving water was something of a mania on spacecraft, so pumping out so much seemed almost sinful. But as one of Paul's instructors had advised, plain old water was also the best heat-sink in the universe. Nothing beat it for cooling down a fire. You do what you have to do.
Reaching the hatch out of Forward Engineering offered little apparent change in conditions, but a major psychological boost. As he groped his way onward, Paul finally noticed a thinning in the gloom. Smoke visibly rushed away from him, moving toward the same bulkhead the Damage Control party was headed toward. By the time they reached the outer hatch, they could see it, as well as the nearby vent sucking up the smoke and routing it toward the air purifier where the particles making up that smoke would all be scrubbed out. 'Lieutenant Candon? We're at the hatch.'
'Roger. Go ahead and open it. The temporary airlock should hold six sailors at a time. How are your suits holding up?'
'They'll last.' The automatic openers still worked here, swinging the hatch smoothly open. The Damage
