The inside of Doc's suit smelled like hartwood, a popular scent for men's toiletries back home on Paradise. At one time or another, both Torin's brothers had used it. She hadn't smelled it on Doc when she'd killed him.
The rush of escaping air had already begun to pull on the outside of the suit when Torin released one boot, twisted, bent her knee, and remagged it to the wall. It was a fight against the equalizing pressure to get the second up, but she managed. Body parallel to the deck, helmet pointed toward the opening doors, she turned her head to see Craig had assumed the same emergency position.
The boots were designed to hold even against an atmospheric pressure of 1.06 kilograms per square centimeter suddenly leaving the station.
Leg bones were not.
The decompression doors were about five centimeters apart, and there was still enough atmosphere in the ore docks that the slam of the wrench across the break rang out loud enough to be heard in spite of the rush of air and helmets. Eight centimeters apart when the first of the Grr brothers hit, nine for the second, ten by the time enough bones had broken to fit them both through the space. When Doc hit a moment later, there was almost no delay-Human bones being so much easier to break than Krai.
Torin felt the bulkhead shake as the armory slammed against the inside of the storage pod. Given that it was nearly as tall as the pod and taller than the door, it was, unfortunately, going nowhere without help.
"Should we be worried about that?"
It seemed Doc had been a little hard of hearing. Torin lowered the volume on his suit comm. "The ship it was on blew up around it. It should be able to survive this."
"Should?"
The doors were at the two-meter mark, and most of the atmosphere had vented. Torin released her boots, used her hands to push off gently, folded her feet under her as she came up on the vertical, and used her legs to shoot toward the ceiling and the cargo runners.
Craig was no more than a second behind her.
Unable to get to them from within, Big Bill would send ships. That was a given. He wouldn't let the armory go without a fight. What was also a given was that venting the volume of atmosphere in the ore dock was enough to force the station computers to make orbital corrections. While that was happening, the docking computer would lock down the clamps to minimize the variables. They didn't have much time; hopefully, they had enough.
Reaching the cluster of cables, Torin grabbed one and turned so her boots hit the ceiling. "Where the hell are the controls?"
"Here." Craig flipped the ten-centimeter disk on the end of a cable so Torin could see the controls on its top. "There's a manual fail-safe on each cable in case something takes out the central controls."
There was-had been-a war going on. Stations were prime targets.
"Flick the release," he continued, adding action to words, "Then push off toward the pod. The cable will scroll out with you."
"What happens if Big Bill cuts the power?" Torin asked as she followed him down.
"We're screwed, so let's hope he doesn't think of it." "Captain!" Huirre had both hands and a foot working his board. "The docking clamps won't release!"
"The docking computer is in lockdown, Captain. We can't access it."
We, Cho growled silently. Spreading the blame. He wanted to scream at Dysun to keep her fukking hair still.
"There's no way to get free of the station," she added.
"There fukking well is!" Cho slapped his palm down on his board. "Krisk! How much explosives do we have?"
"Why?"
"Why? So I can stuff them up your ass and detonate! Do we have enough to unlock the docking clamps?"
"We do." The engineer sounded bored. When they got out of this, Cho'd give him bored! "You could always use the emergency blow."
When Cho looked up, Huirre shrugged. "Use the what?" he demanded.
"It's a last resort in case the station gets attacked and is-oh, I don't know-falling out of orbit. It blows the ship away. Of course, it blows a fukking hole in the station and the atmosphere plus anything lying around loose vents right at the ship, so, like I said, last resort."
"Doors are almost all the way open, Captain." He could see from where he was sitting that Dysun had called up a new screen. So she wasn't completely useless. "The dock has lost atmosphere."
"Well, fuk it, if that's the case, use the blow. I'll send the command to your board. Hang on… Should be showing now."
"How do you know this?" How did he not know this? The Heart of Stone was Cho's ship. His. Not Krisk's.
The engineer snorted. "I helped design the fukking ship for the Navy, didn't I."
After this was over, he was going to have a talk with Krisk. Pry him out of his engine room and find out why he'd been hiding…
"Captain!" The hatch slammed against the bulkhead, and Almon charged into the control room. "Nadayki's not on board! He's still on the ore docks."
"Then he's dead," Cho said bluntly.
Almon's eyes darkened. "You left him there to die!"
Cho ducked the first wild swing, and then Nat appeared, nose streaming blood, and jabbed a trank into Almon's neck. He staggered sideways and hit the deck hard.
"Bastard slammed a pointy elbow in my face when I tried to stop him." Nat rolled him over with the toe of her boot. "My best guess is he'll be out for a couple of hours. What do you want me to do with him, Cap?"
"Drag him to his quarters and lock him in." Cho stared past Nat at Dysun. If he'd thought her fukking hair had been annoying before, now it was so agitated it seemed every hair moved independently. Her eyes were so dark no orange showed. "Big Bill vented the docks," he said. "Not me. You want to get back at him, avenge Nadayki, you stay at your station and we grab that armory and we come back weaponed up and kick his ass!"
Her hair slowed and her eyes lightened. "Your word that we come back."
"William Ponner thought he could take what was mine. Thought he could tell me what to do. No one does that."
Dysun stared at him for a moment, then took a deep breath and slid back into her seat. "Ready to blow the clamps, Captain."
"We'll make a pirate of you yet," Huirre snorted.
"Fuk you."
"In three, two, one!" Cho sent the codes.
The Heart of Stone shuddered, jerked… "What the hell?"
Torin dove behind the armory as bits of metal and plastic shot toward her. "The Heart just exploded the docking clamps and ripped away from the air lock."
"Last resort blow. So as not to go down with a damaged station."
Craig lived on his ship. He should know.
Torin ducked behind the armory, legs drawn up, as pieces of debris ricocheted back and found herself shoulder to shoulder with Craig. "You okay?"
"So far."
Yeah. She fukking hated zero G shrapnel in an enclosed space. "Question." They headed back to opposite sides as things cleared. "Is the Heart making a run for it, or lining up with the hatch to grab the armory?
"The Heart's armed, Torin. And Cho's got to be pretty pissed."
"So the odds are high he'll come back shooting. Let's get this thing clear!"
They'd had to tip the armory onto its side to get it out of the storage pod-the cables, fed around a rod lowered from the runners, were attached at the lower edge of the armory with magnetic pads, and then the cables retracted. It was bit like threading a needle with explosives. Once out, Craig began moving the rod, and the horizontal armory tucked up against it, toward the doors.
Torin would have been happy to just fling it toward open space, but neither the runners nor the cables were set up for that. Nor for speed, she growled silently emerging from yet another duck and cover. Ressk might be able to remove the safety protocols that kept them at a sedate crawl-weightless or not, the usual loads through here had sufficient mass to crush mere flesh and bone-but without Ressk on call, they needed to come up with another solution. "Leave the cables attached so that we have something to hold, but let them run free."