But Victor wasn’t waiting. He had seen someone. Alive. “There’s someone down there.” He hit the trigger on his thumb, and the propulsion pushed him toward the corridor entrance. He jinked left, avoiding a protruding beam, then jinked right avoiding another.
“Slow down,” said Father.
Victor rotated his body, got his feet under him, and slowed. He landed expertly atop the bars and metal that bent across and blocked the corridor. He stepped to the side, squatted down, and looked through a hole in the web of metal down into the corridor, as if peering down a well. He could see him clearly now. A man. The circle in the hatch was smaller than the man’s face, but he was clearly alive and looked desperate. He wasn’t wearing a mask, either, meaning he had none, or the canisters had run out. Victor zoomed in, switched on his helmet vid, and blinked out the command to send the feed to everyone else.
The reaction was immediate. Bahzim started giving commands. “All right. Listen up. I want cables on this wreckage. Moor it to us. Lock it down. I don’t want it spinning. Segundo, I want you and Vico cutting away that debris at that entrance. I want the other shears at the hatch Chepe found. We might be able to reach survivors through there. Chepe and Pitoso, circle the wreckage another time and look for another way inside. Nando, I want you with a board and marker down there with Segundo and Vico communicating with whoever’s inside. I want to know how many are alive and what their status is.”
Father and Toron gingerly landed beside Victor, carrying the saws and hydraulic shears.
“He must have heard Chepe knocking,” said Victor. “There might be other people in there.”
“And we’re going to get them out,” said Father, handing a saw to Victor. “Try the saw first. If it gives you problems, go with the shears. Let’s cut these channel beams away first.” He indicated the ones Victor had avoided. “We need a clear path in and out of here.”
Victor wanted to say something to the man at the hatch. “We’re here. We’re going to get you out. You’re going to live.” But no one could reach the hatch yet with all the obstructions in the way, and Victor had no means of communicating with the man anyway. Father took the beam on the left, Victor the one on the right. Victor fired up his saw. The blade spun.
“Clean cuts,” said Father, “as close to the bottom as you can. Don’t rush.”
Victor’s blade cut into the metal. He couldn’t hear it, but the saw vibrated in his hands as it ate through the beam. Nineteen hours. Someone had gone nineteen hours. It looked like a big space. There had to be more people inside. Maybe it was their version of the fuge, the designated place for an emergency. Maybe lots of people had gone there. The saw felt slow in his hands. He pulled the blade free and killed the power. “Toron, give me the shears.”
Toron passed them, and Victor wiggled the pincers into place and started the hydraulics. The shears went much faster, cut-crunching their way through the beam, opening and closing like a ravenous animal, making easy work of the metal.
Bahzim was giving more orders, sending two more miners down with hydraulic spreaders.
The shears bit through the last few inches, and the beam snapped free.
“Easy,” said Father. “Push it away slowly, not by a jagged edge.”
Their gloves had an outer layer of leatherlike material and were built to withstand heavy use and scrapes, but Victor was overly cautious anyway. The beam drifted away. Nando was down near the web of metal covering the corridor entrance, writing on the small light board with a stylus. He wrote, “How many people?” and turned the board around for the man. The man in the hatch placed nine fingers against the glass.
“Nine people,” said Nando.
“Vico,” said Father. “Don’t take your eyes off what you’re doing. Pay attention.”
Victor turned away from the hatch. Father was right. He couldn’t cut and watch Nando or the man at the hatch. He focused on the girder beam he was cutting and guided the shears through the metal. Nine people. So few. The Italians had close to three hundred people.
“He’s writing on the glass with his finger,” said Nando. “One letter at a time. He’s moving slowly. He seems half out of it. Air. He’s saying they need air.”
“I don’t see any other entrance besides the hatch we knocked on,” said Chepe. “We’ve been around the whole thing.”
“Ask him if Alejandra is in there,” said Toron.
“Ask him first if he can reach the outer hatch,” said Bahzim. “We might be able to get a docking tube sealed over it. Then they could open the hatch and fly right up to us.”
Victor continued to cut metal while Nando wrote. Shards of twisted bulkheads and deck plating fell away as Victor’s shears chewed through them.
“He’s shaking his head no,” said Nando. “They can’t reach the hatch.”
“Why not?” asked Bahzim. “Because they sealed off that room or because it’s not accessible from where he’s at?”
“I can’t fit all that on the board,” said Nando.
“Just figure out a way to ask him,” said Bahzim.
Nando wrote. Victor allowed himself a glance down the corridor. The man in the window looked half asleep. His eyes kept drooping. “He’s passing out,” said Victor.
“Keep cutting, Vico,” said Father. “Stay focused.”
Victor returned to his work, cutting furiously, pushing pieces away, trying to clear a path.
“He’s writing again on the glass,” said Nando. “H… U… R…”
“Hurt?” suggested Bahzim.
“Hurry,” said Chepe. “He’s saying hurry. They’re out of air. Now he’s drifting away. We’re losing him.”
“We’ve got to get air in there now!” said Toron.
“Chepe,” said Bahzim. “You and Pitoso get a bubble over that hatch you found. Get nine masks and canisters. I want you to find another way to reach these people and get them air as fast as possible.”
Victor guided the shears through a particularly thick girder. There was still so much to cut away, still so much work to do. We’re not going to make it, he realized. We have nine people just a few feet away, and we’re not going to reach them in time.
Chepe shot upward from the wreckage, twisting in such a way that his lifeline easily avoided the sharp protuberances. Protecting your line was the most critical part of flying, but it was also the first thing most novice flyers forgot. Everyone was always in such a rush to shoot forward that they never took the time to look back. Which was a mistake. If you wanted to avoid snags, kinks, knots, and cuts, you had to “keep your mind on your line,” as the saying went, and Chepe always did.
The hatch he and Pitoso had found was on the opposite side of the wreckage, so Chepe flew straight up to a distance that he figured was at least twice the distance to the hatch and begin his descent, moving, as always, in an arc. Most young flyers assumed that the best route between two points was a straight line, but Chepe knew different. Tall arcs worked best. You avoided the obstructions that could snag your line, and wherever you were going, you always arrived with plenty of slack.
Pitoso appeared beside him, keeping pace, moving in a parallel arc, with their lines trailing behind like a parabolic tail. They both slowed at the same instant as they approached the jagged debris around the hatch. As soon as they landed, Pitoso pulled the deflated bubble from his bag and unfolded it. Chepe then helped him spread it over the hatch. Bulo, another miner, arrived carrying a bag of masks and canisters, and Chepe took them and slid them under the bubble canopy. Then he reached back and detached his own lifeline. His suit powered off. His comm went silent. His HUD disappeared. He climbed under the canopy, found the ripcord and pulled it. The bubble inflated into a clear dome that sealed itself to the hull with Chepe and the masks inside. Pitoso plugged Chepe’s detached lifeline into the external valve on the bubble while Chepe took the internal line and plugged it into his back. Power returned to his suit, and with it, fresh air and heat.