Gary Gibson - Stealing Light

Which led her to the conclusion Trader had left boobytraps in case of just such an eventuality. After all, it was exactly what she would have done.

The air got thin enough for Dakota’s filmsuit to activate automatically, swallowing her bruised and battered body in its oily embrace. She felt Corso’s hand jerk away for an instant, as it touched his skin where he clung on to her.

She realized to her chagrin that getting out of the storage room would have been a lot easier if she’d activated the filmsuit as soon as the lights went out, because the lenses over her eyes were starting to pick up the infrared heat signatures of the walls and machinery around them, making it far easier for her to find her way.

Corso’s flesh glowed a dull orange beside her, while the corridor was transformed into a hellish tangle of hidden power conduits and circuitry overlaid with the ghostly cool sheen of the walls. But at least she could see they were heading in the right direction.

Corso was floundering badly, struggling to breathe. The howling sound was becoming fainter. Another minute or so and they’d be in vacuum.

She grabbed hold of Corso, dropping them both straight down the middle of a drop shaft that she remembered would take them most of the way.

Then, thankfully, dull red emergency lighting flickered on.

They got to an airlock, and she hauled both of them inside it, feeling her bruised and exhausted muscles protest. Fortunately the airlocks were all equipped with emergency manual switches that would pressurize them within a couple of seconds, and they ran on circuits independent of the ship’s central stacks.

She hammered at a switch and waited for what felt like long, long seconds before she heard a faint hiss that gradually built up into a roar that lasted several seconds.

She let herself slide down against the wall, almost crying with relief. Corso lay slumped beside her.

That empty silence inside her, where her Ghost had been, was no longer so silent. The alien presence she’d felt entering her now filled up her skull, grating against her senses as if it quite literally didn’t fit.

She listened carefully to its voice, and realized the creature that had entered her mind was the same as the intelligence she’d previously sensed within the derelict’s stacks. And with this came other knowledge.

She could hear other voices-like that of the derelict, but different-calling from deep within the inner system.

It seemed there was more than one derelict in the Nova Arctis system.

Without thinking about it, she tried to summon a mental image of the cargo bay on the far side of the airlock. But instead of the perfect, accurate, three-dimensional map she would once have expected, there was only a half-formed notion drawn from her own frail human memories, inexact and unreliable.

She opened a locker, hoping to find an emergency suit there, but it was empty. She cursed and slammed the door closed. She glanced at Corso lying half dead beside her, and knew they had no choice but to exit into the vacuum of the cargo bay regardless.

If she remembered-if her frail, human memory served her right-the Piri Reis was located very close to their current position.

‘Corso? Corso, can you hear me?’ She shook his shoulder frantically.

His eyelids fluttered, and Dakota thanked the heavens as his eyes focused on her.

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘There’s only so much air in here and hard vacuum out there. Understand?’

His head moved slightly in what passed for a nod. ‘I hear you,’ he rasped.

‘The cargo bay is just on the other side of this airlock. We’re going to have to move fast, and I mean fast. But it shouldn’t take more than half a minute or so.’ She forced a weak grin. ‘Think you can last that long?’

‘But I don’t have a suit.’ His eyes focused more clearly. ‘Dakota, no-’

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ she said, reaching up to the airlock’s control panel. ‘When I say, take a couple of deep, rapid breaths, OK? Suck it in, hyperventilate, and then let your lungs empty. I’ll get you there in a couple of seconds, I swear.’

‘You’re insane,’ he murmured.

‘Right, and back on your blessed Redstone people don’t try to prove they’re the ultimate flicking warrior by seeing how much poisonous native atmosphere they can breathe without passing out or dropping dead?’

‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘Like hell it isn’t. It’s dangerous, and so is this -except this time you don’t actually have a choice. Unless you’d rather sit here in this airlock and wait for those maniacs to find us again.’

‘There’s no other way?’

‘Like you don’t know that already!’ she snapped. ‘No more time for arguments.’ She hit the panel, and it began counting down the ten seconds to depressurization. ‘Now, Corso! Draw it deep, blow it all out. Hard and fast. Do it!’

Corso staggered to his feet. ‘Crazy bitch,’ he yelled, then forced his chest in and out, drawing air deep into his lungs. For all his apparent anger, Dakota could see just how terrified he was.

A bell chimed, followed by a loud hissing that got rapidly fainter. Corso’s eyes widened in alarm and he emptied his lungs one last time. Absolute silence fell and the outer door swung open on a cargo bay that was tinged hellish red. Corso propelled himself out of the airlock and into the interior of the bay with manic energy.

Dakota followed. For a heart-stopping moment she couldn’t figure out which way to go, but then she managed to make out the Piri’s dim shape. She boosted across the empty space, towards a spinning and flailing Corso, and collided with him.

They sailed together across the bay, crashing into a bulkhead only a short distance from the Piri Reis’s hull. Dakota stabbed towards it with one oilslick hand, Corso kicking after her.

He almost made it, heading the right way, but then he started to drift. The frantic pedalling motion of his arms and legs grew weaker moment by moment. Dakota pushed back towards him in a panic. For far too long, they’d both been running on nothing but sheer adrenalin.

As he finally drifted up against the Piri’s hull, she reached for the emergency access panel and slammed the release switch with her fist. An airlock flipped open a few metres further along, and Dakota manhandled him inside.

Corso lay beside her, apparently unconscious, as she waited for the pressure to stabilize. She shook him, out of fear and frustration as much as anything else, but got no reaction. She pinched his nostrils and blew air deep into his lungs. After several seconds he jerked away from her, his chest rising and falling more noticeably.

The inner door finally swung open and Dakota’s filmsuit dissolved back into her pores. ‘ Piri ,’ she shouted, ‘get the medbox ready!’

She looped one of Corso’s arms over her shoulder and dragged him inside, weeping from the effort. To her eternal gratitude, the status lights on the medbox showed it was already activated. She cracked the lid open and started to lift Corso inside with one last, strenuous effort.

He pushed weakly against her with her hands. ‘Dakota. I’m fine. It’s fine. I’m-’ He curled up in a ball and started coughing violently. ‘Oh God, I never want to go through anything like that again. I thought I was dead.’

‘Take it easy. We’re safe for the moment.’ She put one hand on his shoulder, in an effort to reassure him.

A few moments later he passed out. Dakota closed the lid on the medbox and went through to the command module and sat down at the console. Her stomach twisted to think of piloting the ship without her Ghost anticipating every thought and action.