'What have you let up here?' Marquis demanded. He didn't care about etiquette now. His ship was suffering.
'We believe there is an alien on board the spaceplane,' Simon Roderick said.
'What?'
'An alien,' Roderick said imperturbably. 'It has human allies who will probably try to hijack the Koribu.'
'Over my dead body.' Marquis watched a camera image of the axial corridor. The Skin and his spacesuited companion were through the emergency pressure door. They stopped where there was some kind of access panel on the corridor wall, and the spacesuited figure took out a power blade.
'Let's hope it doesn't come to that,' Roderick said.
'The intruders have exposed a network node,' the AS said. 'Subversion software is loading directly into the local neurotonic pearls. It is reconfiguring their processing patterns.'
'Stop it,' Marquis said.
'I am unable to comply. Network data management routines have been corrupted. Firewalls established. Power and environmental support withdrawn.'
'Holy Jesus.' Marquis studied the starship's primary schematic. They'd lost all contact with the rear third of the Koribu, which now lay beyond the firewalls and closed emergency pressure doors. 'What can this alien do?'
'I'm not sure,' Roderick replied. 'But it has technology well in advance of ours. You might not be able to stop them.'
'Break out the weapons,' Marquis ordered. 'I want our crewmen armed and authorized to shoot.'
'We've got ten carbines and some dart pistols,' Colin Jeffries said. 'They'll just bounce off Skin.'
'But maybe not the other one.'
'I am detecting venting from the isolated cargo sections,' the AS reported.
'Venting what?' an aghast Marquis asked. The panes shifted to views from external cameras. Huge plumes of glittering silver vapor were fountaining out of the starship's rear sections.
'Spectrographic analysis indicates it is our atmosphere,' the AS said.
The doctor refused to cooperate at first. Simon didn't actually threaten him, but he came close before the man's more basic survival instinct cut in.
'I really don't recommend this,' the doctor said. He was helping two orderlies push Simon's trolley and three cabinets of intensive-care support equipment through the spaceport terminal building. 'You're not stable enough for something as traumatic as a spaceplane flight yet. Please reconsider.'
'No,' Simon grunted. He could hear his Skin escort shouting at people to get out of the way. Protests and hurried scraping sounds. Trivial background details he ignored.
An optronic membrane was covering his remaining eye, showing him camera images from the Koribu and the space-planes around it. Gas was still venting from the fat barrel of its cargo section. There must have been twenty of the plumes, emerging from hatches and valves distributed among the silos. His communication link to the starship buzzed with confused, shouted orders and queries. Crewmen were struggling into spacesuits, collecting weapons from the executive officer. As countermeasures went, it was truly pitiful.
The starship's AS was completely ineffectual against the alien's Prime program. If Newton and the other (presumably an enhanced villager) kept going along the axial corridor and physically loaded it into every section, they would soon have complete control. His personal AS now considered this was their most likely strategy. The most uncomplicated and efficient way of hijacking a starship, with a frighteningly high projected success level.
Simon saw a small silver sphere fly out from the cargo section.
'What was that?' he asked.
'Lifeboat,' Marquis Krojen said. 'There's very little air left back there. My crew is having to abandon the contaminated area.'
Simon's trolley wheels bumped over a small ridge on the floor. He moaned at the sharp flare of pain that the jolt inflicted.
'Sorry,' the doctor said. He didn't sound it 'Can the engineering shuttles close down the venting?' Simon asked.
'Some of them, possibly. But there's not enough time.'
Several of the plumes were shrinking, becoming less energetic.
The trolley was pushed into an elevator. Simon's magnetic sense showed him almost a dozen people clustered around him as the doors slid shut.
'Damn,' Marquis Krojen exclaimed. 'They just blew another pressure door. That puts them above the first life support wheel.'
'Where are your people?' Simon demanded.
'I'm putting a squad together. We're not trained for this, not fighting a Skin.'
'Learn fast.' Simon saw another two lifeboats shoot away from the Koribu's cargo section.
'The subversion software's loading,' Marquis Krojen said. 'We're losing another section.'
'Can they take over the life support wheel?'
'Not directly. The AS inside will firewall the wheel. But controlling the axial corridor gives them the power and environment feeds to the wheel.'
The elevator halted and the doors opened. Simon's trolley was wheeled out into the fueling bay's operations center.
The SF9 opened a communication link. 'What do you think you're doing?' he asked.
The orderlies started pushing Simon's trolley across the walkway to the waiting Xianti.
'I'm going up to the Norvelle,' Simon told his clone sibling. 'I'll assume command of our response operation from there.'
'Don't be ridiculous. You're in no condition to assume command of anything.'
'I'm here, you're not. It would take you hours to get up into orbit. That could well be too late.'
