“I’m set,” said Chepe.
“Go,” said Bahzim.
Chepe removed the emergency lid from the center of the hatch to access the manual wheel lock. Then he gripped the wheel and turned. At first he strained, but the wheel suddenly loosened, and it spun quickly thereafter. Finally he felt the lock snap free, then slowly lifted the hatch. He felt no rush of air as the vacuum of the bubble was filled from air inside. He checked his sensors on his wrist and confirmed what he already suspected. “There’s no air beyond the hatch. There must be a leak inside.”
“Then we don’t need the bubble,” said Bahzim. “Take it off so you have more mobility to look around.”
Chepe found the release valve on the bubble and pulled it. The bubble deflated, and Chepe returned his normal lifeline to his back. The room beyond was dark and cluttered with floating debris. Chepe floated through the entrance, intensified his helmet lights, and saw-
A dead man’s face just inches from his own. Chepe recoiled. The face was gaunt and white in the bright lights, eyes closed, mouth slack, a man in his fifties, an apron around his waist. No mask.
“Push him to the side,” said Pitoso, coming in through the hatch. “There’s bound to be more like him.”
Chepe set his feet against the wall and reluctantly reached out and pushed the man in the chest, sending him back into the darkness to the right.
Pitoso came forward, pushing other debris away. “Looks like a kitchen,” he said.
Chepe took in their new surroundings. The room had once been a large kitchen, maybe twenty meters square. But now it barely resembled one. The walls were all slightly bent, twisted to one side in the attack, creating awkward angles and shadows, with the floor sloping up slightly in one place and dipping down in another. Debris was everywhere. Pots, food, appliances, all scattered throughout as if everything had broken free and banged around in the explosion. Structural material stuck out from the walls: conduit, pipes, support beams. They would need to tread carefully in here.
“Come on,” said Pitoso. “Let’s find another way to the survivors.”
They advanced slowly, lightly tapping their propulsion triggers to push themselves forward, brushing aside debris as they went: cutlery, tubs of dry goods, boxes. Another body floated to their right. A woman, wearing an apron.
“I see a hatch,” said Pitoso.
Chepe looked where Pitoso was pointing, and his heart sank. A hatch was indeed ahead, but there was no way of reaching it. Not easily anyway. The whole floor had broken upward right at the hatch, as if pulled apart, bending deck plating and support beams up and onto the bottom half of the hatch. The hatch itself looked undamaged, but getting to it and clearing a path wide enough to open it would take hours at least, even a day maybe. The bigger problem, though, was the wall around the hatch. It was bent and pinched in places.
“We can’t get to those people this way,” said Chepe. “There’s no way we’ll get a bubble seal over that hatch, even if we cut all this debris away. Look at the wall.”
Pitoso shined his light around the edges of the hatch. “Then we need to find another way.”
But there wasn’t one. They circled the entire room. They found storage rooms and another hatch, but this led to a corridor where the walls pinched completely closed, and beyond it was space anyway.
“We got nothing,” said Chepe. “The only way to reach the survivors is through the blocked corridor where Vico and Segundo are cutting.”
“Then we’re in trouble,” said Pitoso. “Because even if they get air in there, there’s no way to get those people out.”
“Back up,” said Victor. “We’re cutting the last pieces free.”
Nando and Toron backed away from the opening, while Victor and Father cut the last of the girder framework away, clearing the entrance of debris. Their work wasn’t done, however. The entrance was still too narrow for anyone to pass through and reach the hatch; the walls had been pinched close together when it tore away from the ship.
“Get those spreaders in there,” said Bahzim. “Make that entrance as wide as possible.”
Victor and Father stepped aside for those with the hydraulic spreaders. The men placed the two ends of the spreader on opposite walls of the entrance and then started the hydraulics. The spreader bars expanded, pushing the walls father apart, making an opening. Finally, after several minutes that felt like an eternity, the walls were wide again. Victor didn’t even wait for the miners to remove the spreaders. He ducked under the machine and flew down to the hatch.
Through the window he could see people inside. Those that were moving looked on the verge of falling asleep.
“Do you see other people?” asked Father, coming up behind Victor.
“Do you see Alejandra?” asked Toron.
“No,” said Victor. “But I can’t see everyone. Some of them are alive. Barely.” He turned to Father. “We need to get air in there immediately.”
“How?”
Behind Father, running parallel along the corridor wall, were a series of pipes. Victor moved to them, identifying them by their shape and type. Fresh water. Sewer water. Electrical. Air. The air pipe disappeared through the wall near the hatch. Victor knew there would be a valve on the wall on the other side. As soon as the corridor decompressed, the emergency system would have sealed the valve automatically so that no air from the room escaped through the severed pipe in the corridor.
“If we can get someone inside to open the air valve,” said Victor, “we can attach one of our lifelines to the pipe and feed them fresh air.”
“Disconnect someone’s line?” said Father.
“Either that or they die,” said Victor. “I’ve been watching Chepe’s vid as we were cutting. There’s no reaching them any other way.”
“He’s right,” said Bahzim. “If you don’t get air to them here, they die. I’m not too keen on cutting someone’s line, though.”
“If you got a better idea, let’s hear it,” said Victor.
“I don’t,” said Bahzim.
Victor looked at Father. “Decision time.”
Father hesitated. “All right. But we use my line.”
Toron was at the hatch window, looking through.
“Move over, Toron,” Victor pushed him aside and looked through the window. “There. Across the room. On the right side. There’s another valve. That means there’s another air pipe over there. We need to flood this room. Two lines pumping in a hundred times what the lines are feeding us now. Take Nando and see if you can find the pipe that feeds to that valve. Leave the light board. Toron and I will do this pipe.”
Father looked through the window of the hatch, spotting the valve, judging where the corresponding pipe would be on the other side of the wreckage. He turned back to Victor. “I don’t like this.”
“Me neither. But we don’t have time to discuss it, do we?”
Father sighed. “Be careful.”
Father went. Nando followed. Victor looked at Toron and handed him a wrench from his tool belt. “Bang on the hatch. Get someone’s attention. They need to open that valve.”
Toron began banging on the hatch. Victor took the saw, fired it up, and cut easily through the pipe. Then he killed the saw, set it aside, and used another tool to pry the pipe that led to the room away from the wall.
“He’s coming back,” said Toron. “The guy from before. He’s back. But he looks half asleep.”
“Anoxia. Lack of oxygen. Mental confusion. Impaired thinking. Write on the board. Tell him he needs to open the valve. Keep knocking so he stays with us.”
“I can’t knock and write at the same time.”
Victor took the wrench and banged. Toron wrote then held up the sign. “Open the valve,” Toron said.
The man inside read the sign and furrowed his brow.
“He doesn’t understand,” said Toron.
“Point to it,” said Victor. “Show him where the valve is.”
“I can’t see it,” said Toron.
“It’s probably to the right of the door. Our right. His left. Flush against the wall.”