"Wonder how they got pressure back in here?" the rating said.
"One of the reasons I think it was a secondary," Wanderman replied. "Anything that got this deep from the outside and did that kind of damage would've left a breach all the way in that would've been hell to seal. But if something like a superconductor ring blew this deep in, it could have shredded the passage this way and opened a small breach clear to the skin without opening up the entire side of the ship."
"Kinda makes you wish they'd lost the grav plates, doesn't it?" the other rating put in.
"Freefall would help," Wanderman agreed. "But I think if we stay to port we'll be all right. Just watch your footing."
Helen's curiosity was almost more than she could stand-especially since, technically, she was the senior (as in only ) officer present. Under the circumstances, however, she wasn't about to attempt to assert authority over a noncom with Wanderman's years of experience. And if she'd been tempted to, the thought of Commander Lewis' reaction to her temerity would have depressed the temptation immediately. But she still-
Wanderman and the others moved aside, and Helen abruptly wished they hadn't.
The entire right-hand side of the passage ahead had been ripped as if by a huge, angry talon. It was splintered and broken, half-melted and recongealed in places, for a distance of nine or ten meters. The damage crossed one of the ship's emergency blast doors, and the door's starboard panel had obviously never had a chance to move before whatever titanic blow had torn the passage apart froze it.
And neither had the crewmen who'd been in the passage when that blow hit.
She couldn't even tell how many of them there'd been. The port bulkhead was pitted where fragments of the starboard bulkhead had ricocheted from it, but the marks were hard to see because of the blood patterns splashed across it. It looked as if some lunatic with a spray gun of gore had been interrupted halfway through repainting the passage, using bits of human tissue and scraps of human bone to provide texture to her work. Severed limbs, blasted torsos, fingers, bits of uniform, an intact boot with its owner's foot still in it, a human head canted up against the lower edge of the frozen blast door like a discarded basketball… And, worst of all, the contorted body of a man who'd obviously been badly hit by the explosion but miraculously not killed outright when it shattered both his legs. A man whose rupturing lungs had vomited blood from mouth and nose while his fingers clawed at the deck as the passage depressurized about him.
Wanderman's right, a small, still voice said beneath her horror. It couldn't have been a direct hit. This big a breach would've depressurized the passage almost instantly if it went all the way through. And he must have taken several minutes to die, lying here, unable to get away…
She felt the senior chief watching her from the corner of one eye, and she made herself stand there for a moment, looking out over that scene of unspeakable carnage. Then she drew a deep breath.
"I believe you suggested keeping to port, Senior Chief?" she said, gazing at the badly damaged decksole along the starboard side. Her voice sounded strange to her, without the quivers of shock she felt running through her body.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Well," she said, "since I'm the lightest person here, I suppose I should go first to check the footing."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ragnhild Pavletic and Aikawa Kagiyama floated across the crystal vacuum towards Bogey Three. This far from Nuncio-B, they might as well have been in the depths of interstellar space. The system primary was no help at all when it came to making out details of the freighter's damage, and Aikawa wished at least one of the pinnaces had remained close enough to lend the assistance of its powerful lights. But Lieutenant Hearns had been adamant about withdrawing both of them to a safe distance.
Probably another reason I wish they were close enough, he thought wryly. I don't like the notion of their needing a safety perimeter.
Lieutenant Hearns hadn't specified what she was leaving a safe distance against, but it didn't take a hyper-physicist to figure it out. The Dromedary was unarmed, and it sure as hell couldn't hope to ram something as small and agile as a pinnace, even if it had possessed a functioning impeller wedge. But it did have a fusion plant, and that plant was still active, according to the ship's emissions signature. And if someone put his mind to it, he'd had time to get around the safety interlocks if he'd really wanted to.
Not a comforting thought , he reflected, and looked at Ragnhild.
Her face was visible in the backwash of her helmet's heads-up display just as his must be, and she seemed to feel his glance. She turned her head and looked back at him, and her tight smile looked as anxious as he felt. Both of them knew they'd been included in the boarding party solely as part of their training. Lieutenant Hearns had even had to leave Hawk-Papa-Two in the hands of the flight engineer in order to bring Ragnhild along, and she'd never have done that unless she'd wanted the midshipwoman here for a specific purpose. Which could not have anything to do with the lengthy experience in this sort of operation neither of the snotties had.
Aikawa wanted to say something to Ragnhild-whether to encourage her or seek encouragement he couldn't have said. But he kept his mouth shut and only flipped his head in the skinsuited equivalent of a shrug. She nodded back, and they returned their attention to the task at hand, trailing along behind Lieutenant Hearns, Lieutenant Gutierrez, Lieutenant Mann, and the battle-armored Marines.
It took another fifteen minutes to complete the crossing. Most of Bogey Three's running lights were out, but it was unlikely that was because of battle damage. Far more probably, the prize crew had never bothered to turn them on. Why should they, way out here, hiding? But Aikawa wished they had. The freighter's enormous, unlit bulk was an ill-defined mass, like a fog-shrouded mountain, "visible" only by extrapolation from the starscape its looming bulk blocked. The lack of lights deprived him of any reference points and left him feeling uncomfortably like an ant cowering under a descending boot heel.
Judging from the crisp comments and commands flowing back and forth between Lieutenant Mann and his Marines, they, at least, were unaffected by Aikawa's forebodings. They moved briskly, the brilliant circles of illumination from their battle armor's powerful lamps carving slices of solidity out of stygian blackness as they danced across hull plating. They didn't really need lights, given their armor's powerful built-in imaging systems and sensors, Aikawa knew. Were they using the lamps to help out the hapless Navy types less liberally equipped to see in total blackness? Or were they possibly a bit more oppressed by the darkness than their crisp, matter-of-fact voices suggested?
He rather hoped it was the latter, he discovered.
It took another half-hour to locate a maintenance lock. The lock's outer hatch opened readily enough to the standard emergency code on the keypad, and it was large enough to admit their entire party with only a little crowding. Aikawa was delighted to cram into it, since he had a pretty shrewd notion of which two members' junior status would have had them bringing up the rear if it had been necessary to lock through in two waves.
The inner hatch opened into a cavernous equipment bay. The egglike shapes of four one-man heavy maintenance hardsuits were neatly racked along one bulkhead, and bright overhead lights shone on workbenches, racked tools, and bins of electronic components and repair parts. It wasn't as spotless as the same machine shop would have been aboard Hexapuma , but the equipment was obviously well maintained and organized.
The Marines moved out, armor sensors and old-fashioned eyeballs probing carefully. Aikawa had never really appreciated just how many potential human-sized hiding places there were aboard a starship. It wasn't exactly an environment which encouraged designers to leave lots of wasted space, but there were still plenty of nooks and crannies big enough to conceal a person. Or even two or three of them at once. Not that anyone but an idiot would suddenly fling himself from ambush to attack an entire squad of battle-armored Marines.