It was usually nonlethal. Usually.
Two down, three—maybe—to go.
The cockpit doors didn't open when Niner stood back and hit the controls. Atin caught up with Fi again and they stood catching their breath.
Niner motioned Darman into position at the cockpit doors. “Shame that PEP doesn't work through bulkheads.”
“Confirmed, three still inside,” Darman said, running the infrared sensor sweep in his gauntlet up and down the seam of the doors. “Nothing in the port cabin.”
Intel had it right for once: there were five bandits on board.
“Encourage them to step outside, Dar,” Niner said, checking his Deece's PEP setting. He peered at the power readout. “This thing actually scares me.”
Darman unrolled a ribbon of adhesive thermal charge and pressed it around the doors' weak points. Then he pushed the det into the soft material and cocked his head to one side as if calculating. “All that fuss getting in and now we just walk over them. Anticlimactic, I think the word is …”
There was a dull echoing thud and screech of metal that vibrated through the deck. For a second Fi thought the det had gone off prematurely and that it was all a trick of his adrenaline-distorted perception, and that he was dead but didn't know it yet.
But it wasn't the det.
Fi looked at Niner, and Niner looked at Atin, and Fi saw in Darman's viewpoint icon that he was staring at a fragment of flimsi that whipped past him as if snatched by a sudden wind.
It was being carried on a stream of air. Escaping air. Fi felt it grab him and they all reached instinctively for a secure point to anchor them.
“Hull breach,” Fi said, arms tight around a stanchion. “Check suit seals.”
They went into an automatic and long-drilled check of their suit systems. Katarn armor was vacuumproofed. Fi's glove sensor confirmed his suit was still airtight and the thumbs-up from the rest of the squad indicated that their suit integrity was holding up too. The temporary gale of escaping air was abating.
“Sicko, you receiving?” said Niner.
Fi had the same thought, and judging by the rapid breathing on the shared comlink, so had Atin and Darman. The decompression was via the hatch. And that meant the seal formed by the TIV had been breached.
On their comlink there was only faint static and the sound of their own breathing and swallowing.
“Fierfek,” Atin said. “Whatever it is, he's gone.”
Niner motioned Darman to stay by the cockpit hatch and beckoned Fi to follow him. “Let's see if it's fixable. You two stay there.”
“Well, we've probably lost two prisoners now,” Darman said. “Better make sure we haven't lost the rest.”
There was no telling what had dislodged the TIV and whether they were going to meet someone boarding to deal with them. They made their way back up the passage to the entry hatch, DC-17s raised, and there was no sign of the two prisoners they'd left cuffed, nor anybody else.
And the hatch—about two meters by two—was wide open, star-speckled void visible beyond.
Fi gripped the rail on one side of it and leaned out a little. It was a good way to get your head blown off but he decided that the urgency of the situation warranted it.
There was no sign of the TIV. There was no sign of anything. He pulled himself back inboard. At least the gravity was still functioning.
Niner checked the environment sensors on his forearm plate. “Atmosphere's fully vented now.”
“They have to have a foam system in these things.”
“Yeah, but if you had us running around your vessel, would you seal the hull and help us out?”
“Is the cockpit airtight?” Fi asked.
“We won't know for sure until they go cold and we can't pick them up in the infrared.” Niner switched on his tactical spot-lamp and began searching the bulkhead for panels. “And by that time we'll be ice cubes ourselves.”
Katarn armor—even the Mark III version—was only good against vacuum for twenty minutes without a backup air supply. And they hadn't counted on being exposed that long.
For some reason Fi was distracted by Sicko's fate. It was a strange thing to discover when you were on borrowed time yourself. But Sicko had said the power conduits were routed via a panel three meters from …
… here.
Fi ejected the vibroblade from his knuckle plate and pried open the panel. Niner stood behind him and directed his spot-lamp into the recessed mass of cabling, pipes, and wires.
“That one's labeled ISOLATION BULKHEAD,” Niner said.
“Yeah, but where does that come down?”
They looked up at the deckhead for shutter housings. There were at least three back down the passage that they could see.
“Let's play safe and withdraw to the one nearest the cockpit,” Niner said.
“We could blow the whole panel here and shut everything down.” Including the gravity. Lovely. “Usually triggers emergency containment.”
Niner put his glove to the side of his helmet. It was a nervous habit of his, just like the way he grew increasingly irritable with Fi as his stress levels peaked. “Dar, are you getting this?”
“Halfway there already,” said Darman's voice.
Fi's chrono said they had fifteen minutes left to make this work. “Okay, if Dar blows this remotely and it activates the emergency bulkhead, then we'll be stuck between that and the cockpit hatch.”
“And if there's atmosphere in there, we can open it and cozy up to the other three huruune.”
“Or,” Fi said, “we find it's hard vacuum, too, and then we'll be completely stuffed.”
“Stuffed if we don't,” said Darman, appearing at Fi's shoulder with a ribbon of thermal detonator tape. “Go on. Get back there and wait for me while I set the timer.”
“We ought to call in a Red Zero.”
“Let's wait until we know if there'll be anything left of us to make it worth rescuing,” Niner said, trotting back down the passage. Fi watched him go, shrugged at Darman, and then patted the wide-open cover of the control panel.
“Thanks, Sicko,” he said.
3
MRU. Already committed.
–Much Regret Unable, signal relayed from CO, RAS Fearless, on receipt of request to withdraw to Skuumaa and abort extraction of Sarlacc Battalions
The windchill factor in the open troop bay of a LAAT/c gunship flying at five hundred kph was sobering, but then so was the deafening roar of air and the swoops and dips of the flight path as the pilot jinked to stop ground-based AA fire from getting a lock.
Etain realized why the troopers' sealed armor and body-suit was a good idea. She had only her Jedi robes and the sensible precaution of upper-body armor plates, which did little to insulate on their own. She summoned the Force to help her withstand the icy blast and made sure her safety line was hooked securely to the bulkhead rail.
“You're going to be in the dwang when you get back to HQ, General,” the clone trooper sergeant said with a grin. He slipped on his helmet and sealed it. His nickname was Clanky. She'd made a point of asking.
“I really did not see the signal,” she said carefully. “Or at least I looked at it a little too late.”
His voice emerged now from the projection unit of the anonymous helmet. “It was very funny, signaling MRU.”
“Funny? Oh …”
There was a frozen pause. “It's how you decline a social invitation, an RPC.Request the Pleasure of your Company? Much Regret Unable.”