But it hadn't gone off yet. And if they were going to nuke the Koribu, why were they busy trying to subvert it?
"Could our engineering shuttles just rip the Xianti out of there?" Marquis Krojen asked.
Colin Jeffries shook his head doubtfully. "I don't think so. Those shuttles don't have much thrust, and the hold-down latches are designed with a lot more inertia than a loaded Xianti in mind. You'd have to get underneath it and cut through them."
"Work on it. I need options."
"Aye, sir."
"Do we have any contact with any crewmen in the affected section?" Marquis asked the AS. He just couldn't bring himself to say "contaminated."
"No, sir," the AS said. "There are no internal communication links open."
"Very well, I want someone physically looking through the viewport in the emergency pressure door. Give them an open link to the bridge."
"Yes, sir."
"Overflight coming up," Colin Jeffries called.
The AS routed the engineering shuttle's sensor imagery to the panes on Marquis Krojen's console. He looked down on the big pearl-white delta shape, not quite knowing what to expect. It appeared ridiculously impassive. Then his mind ran through docking procedures.
"Did we activate the airlock tunnel?" he asked.
"No, sir," the AS replied. "It was connected after the subversion occurred."
Marquis Krojen looked directly at Colin Jeffries. "They're inside, then. Jesus! Does Durrell Spaceport security actually know what's in there?"
An excited voice burst out of a console speaker. "Sir, I can see somebody moving into the axial corridor."
"Who is this?" Marquis Krojen asked.
"Irwin Watson, sir, fusion engineer."
"Okay, who can you see, Watson?"
"Sir, it's a Skin."
A Skin? Marquis mouthed at Colin Jeffries. The executive officer shrugged.
"What's he doing?" Marquis asked. One of the console panes showed him Watson and several others clustered around the axial corridor's pressure door.
"Sir, he's killing people, shooting them!" Watson's voice had risen to near hysteria.
"What sort of weapon is he using?"
"I don't know. He's got some kind of pistol, but I didn't see it fire. Hey, there's another person through there with him. They're wearing some kind of spacesuit, I think. He's putting something on the door."
"Get back, now," Marquis ordered.
"I can't see what it is."
The camera showed Watson pressing his face against the pressure door viewport.
"Get away from the door. That is an order."
Watson moved back reluctantly, gripping the rungs along the axial corridor. A brilliant white light stabbed out from the pressure door. It vanished as dirty black smoke poured out; streamers churned along the corridor walls like a fast-moving oil slick. A disk of flaming composite suddenly tumbled out of the smoke, narrowly missing Watson.
"Secure that section," Marquis Krojen ordered the AS. "I want physical isolation."
"Affirmative," the AS replied. "Closing emergency pressure doors along the axial corridor."
"Captain." Simon Roderick's face had appeared on one of the console panes. Just his face, against a neutral gray background.
"What have you let up here?" Marquis demanded. He didn't care about etiquette now. His ship was suffering.
"We believe there is an alien on board the spaceplane," Simon Roderick said.
"What?"
"An alien," Roderick said imperturbably. "It has human allies who will probably try to hijack the Koribu."
"Over my dead body." Marquis watched a camera image of the axial corridor. The Skin and his spacesuited companion were through the emergency pressure door. They stopped where there was some kind of access panel on the corridor wall, and the spacesuited figure took out a power blade.
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Roderick said.
"The intruders have exposed a network node," the AS said. "Subversion software is loading directly into the local neurotonic pearls. It is reconfiguring their processing patterns."
"Stop it," Marquis said.
"I am unable to comply. Network data management routines have been corrupted. Firewalls established. Power and environmental support withdrawn."
"Holy Jesus." Marquis studied the starship's primary schematic. They'd lost all contact with the rear third of the Koribu, which now lay beyond the firewalls and closed emergency pressure doors. "What can this alien do?"
"I'm not sure," Roderick replied. "But it has technology well in advance of ours. You might not be able to stop them."
"Break out the weapons," Marquis ordered. "I want our crewmen armed and authorized to shoot."
"We've got ten carbines and some dart pistols," Colin Jeffries said. "They'll just bounce off Skin."
"But maybe not the other one."
"I am detecting venting from the isolated cargo sections," the AS reported.
"Venting what?" an aghast Marquis asked. The panes shifted to views from external cameras. Huge plumes of glittering silver vapor were fountaining out of the starship's rear sections.
"Spectrographic analysis indicates it is our atmosphere," the AS said.
The doctor refused to cooperate at first. Simon didn't actually threaten him, but he came close before the man's more basic survival instinct cut in.
"I really don't recommend this," the doctor said. He was helping two orderlies push Simon's trolley and three cabinets of intensive-care support equipment through the spaceport terminal building. "You're not stable enough for something as traumatic as a spaceplane flight yet. Please reconsider."
"No," Simon grunted. He could hear his Skin escort shouting at people to get out of the way. Protests and hurried scraping sounds. Trivial background details he ignored.
An optronic membrane was covering his remaining eye, showing him camera images from the Koribu and the space-planes around it. Gas was still venting from the fat barrel of its cargo section. There must have been twenty of the plumes, emerging from hatches and valves distributed among the silos. His communication link to the starship buzzed with confused, shouted orders and queries. Crewmen were struggling into spacesuits, collecting weapons from the executive officer. As countermeasures went, it was truly pitiful.