“Trav, you hear me, man?” Alex said.
Travis scarcely heard Alex. He loved Raphael, but they had always been different. He couldn’t bring himself to kill one of the hostages. That was never the plan, and he wasn’t going to change it now. Ash had either called his bluff or was too busy trying to save the ship from whatever was happening with those dark clouds outside.
“Trav!” Alex shouted. He stopped a few feet away and pulled his knife. “Only way the bitch is going to take us seriously is if we stick one of them hostages.”
There was a rumble from a close lightning strike, coupled with the creaking of the bulkheads around them. Travis held out his hands to steady himself as the deck beneath him shook violently. The panicked sounds of the livestock and the frightened screams of the farmers added to the general din.
Alex fell to his knees. “What the hell’s happening?”
“Everyone grab on to something!” Travis yelled. He looked up at the hatch to gas bladder twenty-one and hoped the kid inside knew what the hell he was doing.
* * * * *
The lump on Tin’s forehead throbbed as if it had a heart of its own. He was light-headed and exhausted, but he continued through suffocating heat and darkness, toward the faint hissing sound. His sweaty clothes clung to his body. He stopped to wipe the stinging sweat from his eyes, then crawled ahead.
Working his way toward the noise, he took shallow, conservative breaths from his finite air supply. The leak was close now and sounded as though it was coming from the bulkhead. He waved his hand over the hot surface of the bulkhead.
The ship lurched again, and the entire room seemed to shift to his right, sending him sliding across the floor. A moment later, it had leveled back out, and Tin pushed himself to his knees. Captain Ash was probably trying to maneuver away from an electrical storm. The realization filled him with dread.
He continued, crawling blind on his hands and knees, back toward the faint hiss. Even with the air tank, his breathing was jagged and raspy. And he was dizzy. Really dizzy.
Come on, he thought. Just show me where you are.
His fingers scraped across a small fragment of metal. He picked it up between three fingers. Even in the darkness, he knew that it was a piece of a bullet. He dropped it and kept searching for the puncture. Working methodically, he gridded the surface out in his mind, running his hands over each section. A few minutes later, his right hand slid over the hole. Weak suction pulled on his skin.
Tin let out a yell muffled by his breathing apparatus. “Yes!” Keeping his right hand on the leak, he pulled out one of the patch kits he had tucked in his pants, and placed it on the deck. Then he grabbed the tube of sealant and put it between his knees.
Unzipping the patch kit, he pulled out a flexible metal sheet, peeled off the backing, and laid the patch, adhesive side down, over the leak. Next, he traced a finger around the edges, applying the sealant along the seam. He thought he had done it right, but the true test would be whether it held. Luckily, the hole was small. He just hoped it was the only one.
Digging into his pouch, he felt for the Old World coin his father had given him. He rubbed its smooth contours and thought of his dad.
Listening again, he no longer heard the hiss of escaping helium. It would hold—for now, at least. With luck, he had bought Captain Ash enough time to send in a real engineer.
Tin pushed himself to his feet. Feeling a sudden rush of dizziness, he stretched his arms out for balance. After the feeling passed, he walked slowly across the bladder, hands out in front, and felt for the hatch. Finding the handle, he twisted it open and pulled himself into the tunnel, squirming on his belly across the floor. He closed it behind him and latched it, then crawled through the passage to the hatch that opened onto the farm.
Tracing his way back through the tunnel, he felt a huge grin. He had done it—he’d really done it! The pride of knowing he had patched the bladder slowly drained from him when he reached the other end. He hadn’t thought about what came after. What would Travis and his men do to him? He was so hot and exhausted, he didn’t have the strength to care.
Tin opened the hatch and scrambled out onto the catwalk. He stripped away the mask, squinting in the radiance of the grow lights. Then he sucked in the longest, freshest, most delicious breath of fruit-scented air he had ever known.
“The kid’s back!” someone yelled across the room.
Tin shielded his eyes with his hand and scanned the field to find the voice, but his gaze stopped on his tin hat, winking like a star in the dirt below. Smiling, he collapsed onto the catwalk, his vision fading to black.
The concrete shelter rattled as the blizzard raged outside. After the first fifteen minutes, fatigue began to set in as X felt the draining effect of seven and a half hours’ surface time. Snowflakes laced with nuclear fallout fluttered from the ceiling as he waited for the storm to pass. The rest of the team sat in silence with their backs to the wall.
Bumping his comm pad, X said for the tenth time, “Murph, do you copy?”
The howling storm was his only reply.
“As soon as this passes, we need to get moving,” Weaver said. He stood looking at the knee-deep snow around the bend in the tunnel. “He’s gone. You have to accept that.”
“I’m not leaving until we know for certain Murph is dead,” X said.
Weaver kicked the concrete wall. “We’re wasting time just sitting here!”
“Want to talk about wasting time?” X snarled. “How about that little sightseeing tour you took us on!” He stood up. “You may know where we’re going, but I’m calling the shots. You got that?”
“And you’re going to get us killed,” Weaver said. He looked away. “Wouldn’t be the first time you tried.”
Katrina held up her hands. “Guys! Please stop!”
“I’m with X,” said Magnolia, still sitting cross-legged on the floor. “We’re not leaving Murph until we at least have a look. He could be unconscious, and that’s why he’s not answering.”
“Or he could be dead and buried under five feet of snow,” Weaver said. “Dead is the more plausible—”
“Stop it!” Katrina yelled. “Calm down, sit down, and stop acting like children. We need to work together if we’re going to get through this.”
X was still glaring at Weaver when a sudden flash of gray, wrinkled flesh appeared from the darkness behind Katrina. The Siren lunged through the air faster than X could move. The beast, covered in snow, landed on Katrina, pinning her against the floor.
“Help!” she shouted, arms flailing.
X cursed himself for not paying more attention. He pulled his blaster and fired at the creature’s back as it reared up straight, giving him a clear shot. A high-pitched screech louder than the gunshot bounced off the concrete walls. The monster grasped at a fist-size hole in its torso before slumping on top of Katrina. She pushed at the body and slid out from under its dead weight.
The beast hadn’t come alone. A pack of snow-covered Sirens flooded into the tunnel. Katrina scrambled away. Weaver saw them at the same moment, shouldered his rifle, and fired. The muzzle flashes illuminated a passage crawling with the creatures, their lean, sinewy bodies shifting in the glow.
X stepped in front of Katrina and fired off his last shell. The blast took the leg off of one of the creatures. It tumbled and thrashed across the floor.
Others leaped to the walls and ceiling while X dropped his blaster and unstrapped his rifle. “Get behind me, Magnolia!”
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