"Right." Jack leaned down to one of the unconscious Brummgas and pulled out his gun. A single three-shot burst from the weapon shredded the camera over the door. He turned to the one in the corner of the room, waved cheerily at it, and shot it out, too. "Now what?" he asked, tossing the weapon aside and looking back at Draycos.
The subtle approach was definitely over. Half of the Death weapon was already scattered across the deck in mangled pieces. Draycos was still working on the other half, quickly but methodically shredding it with his claws. "There," the K'da said, flicking his tail toward the hull-side bulkhead.
Jack frowned. Then he spotted it: a narrow, rectangular section of wall that was a slightly different color from the plates around it. It was small, extending vertically only from his eyes to his knees, its width slightly less than that of his shoulders. "What do I do?" he asked as he stepped over to it.
"Push at the top and bottom and slide it to your left."
Jack gave it a try. The panel resisted his first attempt. He tried again, pressing harder. This time it gave way and obediently slid away to the left, revealing a narrow passageway. "Got it," he called, easing his head into the opening. It was hard to tell in the faint light leaking in from their room, but the passageway seemed to go a considerable distance in both directions, bending visibly to the right as it followed the curve of the hull.
The floor wasn't solid but was made of a thin, fragile-looking meshwork, with a lot more of the narrow passageway directly below it. If the passageway had a ceiling, he couldn't see it in the dim light.
"Inside," Draycos said, loping over from what was left of the Death. He reached Jack's side and turned to face the door, crouched ready to leap. "Hurry—I can feel footsteps approaching."
Ducking his head, Jack turned sideways and got one leg through the opening, easing his weight onto the meshwork. To his relief, it was stronger than it looked. He got his other leg in and held out his arm. "Ready," he said.
Still watching the door, Draycos flipped his tail onto Jack's hand and slithered backward onto his arm. That was different, Jack commented. The panel, he saw, had a pair of handles on the inside. Gripping them, he gave the panel another sideways shove. It slid back into position and closed, cutting off the light from the room and leaving Jack in pitch-darkness.
Just in time. Pressing his ear to the panel, he heard the faint sound of the room door opening, followed by the much louder noise of thudding Brummgan feet.
Hold still, Draycos ordered. His head and part of his upper body rose from Jack's shoulder, the passageway picking up a faint green glow as the K'da's eyes rose from the concealment of Jack's flight suit. Draycos reached up with a paw and with two quick slashes cut off a section of bar running along the inner side of the passageway. Brace it against the entrance, he instructed, passing it down to Jack's hand. He sank back onto the boy's skin, leaving only his eyes and the top of his head still three-dimensional.
Silently, Jack moved the bar into place, wedging it between the movable panel and the rear of the passageway. Draycos had cut the bar perfectly, he noted, even to the point of angling the ends slightly so that it would lie flat against both sides. Got it, he said. Where now?
To your left, toward the bow, Draycos instructed. The hull curves inward more strongly in that direction.
Do we care how strongly the hull curves? Jack asked as he set off. The corridor was just a little wider than his shoulders, allowing him to walk straight instead of having to sidle.
The Brummgas and Valahgua are too big to fit in here, Draycos said. But they can still reach in and shoot.
Jack swallowed. Oh.
Ahead, the light from Draycos's eyes showed their path blocked by a fat metallic cylinder decorated with a pattern of angled stripes and spots. It was nearly three feet high and filled the corridor's entire width. Between the sections of stripes and spots Jack could see multiple holes dotting its surface. What is this place, anyway? he asked as he got one leg up over the top of the cylinder.
It's called the tween gap, a space between the inner and outer hulls, Draycos explained. In an emergency—either serious combat or an imminent crash situation—the gap can be flooded with a material called ghikada. It comes out as a vaporized fluid, solidifying quickly and filling the gap.
We have something like that, Jack said, nodding as he shifted his weight onto the cylinder. It was like riding a short but very fat horse. It's called crash foam. It's designed to absorb some of the impact in an accident.
This is somewhat different, Draycos said. Solid ghikada is stronger even than hull metal. Its function is not to absorb damage but to provide an extra shell of protection around most areas of the ship. It was the reason the Havenseeker survived its crash landing on Iota Klestis as well as it did.
Handy stuff, Jack said as he dismounted off the far side of the cylinder. How come you wait to the last minute before using it? Why not keep the tween gap filled all the time?
Because ghikada is strong but unstable, Draycos said. It holds its full strength for only about two hours. After that it begins to soften, and after a few more hours it has melted completely into a liquid form.
From somewhere behind them came the metallic sound of something hammering against the inner hull wall. Sounds like they've figured out where we've gone, Jack said. You say this tween gap goes everywhere in the ship?
Everywhere except the weapons bays themselves and the three navigational bubbles, Draycos said. Those areas need to be open to the outer hull in order to function.
In other words, those sections of the tween gap would be dead ends. We should probably avoid those places, Jack said. Getting trapped with your back to a wall is generally considered bad form.
Don't worry; I have an entirely different refuge in mind, Draycos assured him. We'll need to go up a level to reach it.
Jack looked at the sheer walls beside him. How do we do that?
Just past the next ghikada cylinder will be a vertical section of mesh I'll be able to climb.
They reached the mesh a few minutes later. Draycos came off Jack's back, and with Jack gripping his tail he began to climb.
By now the hammering behind them had stopped, but Jack thought he could hear the hiss of a cutting torch. Apparently, the Brummgas and Valahgua had given up trying to get the door open and had decided on the more direct approach.
They reached the next level up, and with Draycos again on Jack's back they continued heading forward. A few minutes later, they reached another of the tween gap access doors.
Draycos spent a few minutes with his ear pressed against the wall, listening for signs of activity. Then, at his direction, Jack pulled on the handles and slid the panel open.
The room beyond was unlit, but in the glow from Draycos's eyes Jack could see that it was long and narrow and low ceilinged. Nearly the entire floor space was filled with cylinders, longer but thinner than the ghikada containers and sporting a different stripe/spot pattern. They were connected to each other and the deck by a confusing array of pipes, all of which seemed to have unique stripe/spot patterns of their own.