“Kira, you do this: break off a chair for each of us, and then knock out the windows, there and there.” Hwa-jung pointed at each side of the car. “When I activate the circuit, you use your suit to pull us forward, and we will coast into the main tube. The supercapacitors only have enough charge to keep us suspended for forty-three seconds. We’re going about two hundred and fifty klicks per hour relative to the docking ring. We have to shed as much of that speed as possible before we crash. The way we do that is by sticking the chairs out the windows and pushing them against the walls of the tube. They will act as brakes. Clear?”
Kira nodded along with the others. Outside, the fountain of molten metal vanished for a second as the thermal lance reached the floor. Then it reappeared at the top of the dripping incision and started to make a horizontal cut.
“You will have to push very hard,” said Hwa-jung. “As hard as you can. Otherwise the crash will kill us.”
Kira grabbed the nearest chair and wrenched it off its gimbaled mount with a hollow ping. The next three chairs produced similar sounds. With a quick exchange of scents, she explained what they were doing to Itari, and the Jelly also grabbed a pair of chairs with its coiled limbs.
“This is some shit-crazy plan, Unni,” said Sparrow.
Hwa-jung grunted. “It’ll work, punk. You’ll see.”
“Watch your eyes,” Kira said. Then she lashed out with the Soft Blade and smashed the windows along both sides of the maglev.
A furnace-blast of heat washed over them from the interior of the half-shell dome. Falconi, Nielsen, Vishal, and the Entropists dropped to the floor, and Falconi said, “Seven hells!”
The thermal lance started its second downward cut.
“Get ready,” said Hwa-jung. “Contact in three, two, one.”
The floor rose a few centimeters underneath Kira. It listed slightly and then stabilized.
Lifting her arms, she launched several ropy strands from her fingers, through the shattered windows, and onto the walls outside. The xeno understood her intent, and they stuck, like lines of spider silk, and she pulled.
The car was heavy, but it slid forward, seemingly without friction. With a soft brushing sound, it passed through the seal at the end of the station and then tilted downward and raced into the dark, rushing tube set within the inner face of the docking ring.
Wind screamed past them. If not for her mask, Kira would have had difficulty seeing or hearing in the ferocious torrent of air. It was cold too, although—again because of the suit—she wasn’t sure how cold.
She scooped up one of the loose chairs and stuck it out the nearest window. A horrible screeching split the wind, and a comet’s tail of sparks streamed back along the inside of the tube. The impact nearly tore the chair out of her hands, even with the help of the Soft Blade, but she clenched her teeth and tightened her grip and held it in place.
Ahead of her, Itari did the same. Behind her, she was dimly aware of the others staggering to their feet. The screeching worsened as Nielsen, Falconi, Vishal, Sparrow, and the Entropists also pressed their chairs against the wall of the tube. The car rocked and chattered like a jackhammer.
Kira tried to keep track of the seconds, but the noise was too loud, the wind too distracting. It felt as if they weren’t slowing down, though. She leaned on the chair even harder, and it squirmed in her hands like living thing.
The tube had already ground through the chair’s legs and half of its seat; soon she wouldn’t have anything to hold on to.
Slowly—far too slowly—she felt her herself growing lighter, and the soles of her feet started to slip. She fixed herself to the floor via the suit and then slung out lines and secured the others so they could keep pushing and wouldn’t drift away.
The screeching lessened, and the banner of sparks grew shorter and fatter, and soon they began to curl and spiral in elaborate patterns instead of flying straight back.
Kira had just begun to think they would make it when the electromagnets cut out.
The car slammed into the outer rail with a yammering shriek that dwarfed the noise of the chairs. The capsule bucked, and the ceiling twisted and tore like taffy being pulled. Itari flew through the front windshield, tentacles flopping, and from the back, there was an electric flash, bright as lightning, and then smoke billowed through the maglev.
With a dwindling whine, they slid to a stop.
6.
Kira’s stomach lurched as the sensation of weight vanished, but for once, her gorge didn’t rise. That was fine with her. Nausea was the last thing she wanted to deal with right then. Explosions, thermal lances, and maglev crashes… She’d had enough for one day. Suit or not, her whole body felt bruised.
Itari! Was the Jelly still alive? Without it, everything they were doing would be pointless.
Moving jerkily, even in zero-g, she released her hold on the car and the crew. Falconi was bleeding from a cut on his temple. He put the heel of his hand to the wound and said, “Everyone okay?”
Vishal groaned and said, “I believe that removed a few years from my life, but yes.”
“Yeah,” said Sparrow. “Same.”
Nielsen brushed bits of glass out of her hair, sending them drifting forward through the destroyed windshield, like a small cloud of crystal motes. “A bit shaken up, Captain.”
“Second that,” said Veera and Jorrus. The male Entropist had a row of bloody scrapes across his bare ribs, which looked painful but not serious.
Kira pulled herself to the front of the ruined maglev and peered out. She could see Itari several meters ahead of them, clinging to a rail in the hull. Orange ichor oozed from a nasty-looking wound near the base of one of the Jelly’s larger tentacles.
[[Kira here: Are you okay? Can you move?]]
[[Itari here: Worry not about me, Idealis. This form can take much damage.]]
Even as it spoke, one of the Jelly’s bony arms reached out from its carapace and, to Kira’s shock, began to snip away with its pincer at the wounded tentacle.
“What the hell!” said Sparrow, joining Kira.
With startling speed, the alien cut off the tentacle and left it drifting in the air, abandoned amid a cloud of orange blobs. Despite the size of the raw stump left on Itari’s carapace, the Jelly’s bleeding had already stopped.
Hwa-jung coughed and swam her way out of the bolus of smoke, like a ship rising from the depths of oily water. She caught a handhold and pointed out the front. “The next maglev station is just ahead.”
Kira went first, using her suit to knock out the jagged remains of the windshield. Then she pushed herself away from the car, and one by one, the others extricated themselves from the wreckage. Hwa-jung was last; she barely fit through the frame, but with some effort, she made it.
Using maintenance grips on the walls, they crawled along the interior of the black and echoing tube until lights flicked on a few meters ahead of them.
With a sense of relief, Kira aimed herself for them.
As they floated over to the station, a pair of automatic doors in the wall opened and allowed them to dive into the vestibule on the other side.
They paused then to regroup and check their directions.
“Where are we?” Kira asked. She noticed that Vishal had a nasty cut on his right forearm and both of Hwa-jung’s hands were burned and blistering. It must have been excruciating, but the machine boss hid her pain well.
“Two stops past where we should be,” said Nielsen. She pointed downspin (not that they were spinning anymore).
With her in the lead, they started through the abandoned hallways of Orsted’s docking ring.
Occasionally they encountered bots: some recharging from sockets in the walls, some scurrying about on tracks, some jetting about on bursts of compressed air, busy with one of the myriad tasks necessary to the functioning of the station. None of the machines seemed to pay them any mind, but Kira knew each and every one was recording their location and actions.