Chapter 44

While Connor usually enjoyed speed during operations, the shuttle’s approach to the hangar bay seemed suicidally fast. Martienne was frozen in her seat, staring straight ahead.
He turned to Drew for guidance, but the engineer was just as transfixed as the pilot, as silent as everything else in the ship.
Someone had to ask the question, so Connor did. “Aren’t we going a little fast?”
Lights came on in the hangar bay, revealing details that could only be made out up close: the actuator arms on the open doors; the repaired hatch separating the hangar bay from the cargo bay; the tools secured to the bulkheads.
Dozens of meters out, that’s all they were, and they were moving too fast.
Then the pilot went through one of her switch-flipping and button-pushing routines. The freezing air and noxious fumes hadn’t gotten to her.
A shrill hissing sound pierced the air.
Martienne ducked over her harness. “Brace!”
And then they were in the hangar bay, speeding through the open hatch, somehow twisting and turning.
Their momentum shifted, sending the shuttle forward and starboard.
Where it impacted so much harder than it had on the planet below.
Connor had barely had time to wrap himself around the harness. The device tore free of its anchoring buckles after so much abuse, and he headed toward the ceiling.
But the straps securing the harness to the bench held, slamming him back down at an odd angle.
His butt banged against the bench, and his left leg went numb.
Then he came to a stop.
During all of that, he had registered sounds without really hearing them: screams; wrenching metal; cracking glass; the pop of breakers overloading.
Now he realized that all of those sounds had an odd quality about them.
So did the air—and not just the fuel fumes. It was hard to breathe.
The cracking glass? That seemed unlikely. There wasn’t a sense of air rushing out.
Martienne stumbled out of her seat, blood dripping down her face from hair matted thick and dark. “Out. Hurry.”
She collapsed to the floor.
Connor threw his harness off and hobbled toward the pilot, gasping. His eyes were drawn to the spiderwebbed windshield, which was flush against the hangar bay bulkhead.
How bad was the damage?
He grabbed the older woman by the waist and hoisted her up, throwing one of her arms over his shoulder. It was awkward and painful, the numbness in his leg turning into a prickly sensation, like a million needles stabbing him over and over.
Just as he thought he might fall, Drew was there, taking Martienne’s other shoulder and lightening the load.
They staggered toward the airlock, creating momentum as a group.
The engineer looked from the pilot to Connor, and he realized both women had a strange discoloration to their faces, especially around the lips.
It was the air. Thin and funny tasting.
He shifted his hand from Martienne to Drew, grabbing the engineer by the belt. With his free hand, he opened the shuttle hatch. The last of the air rushed out.
Below them, the hangar bay hatch was still closing against the hard vacuum of space, a small sliver of black speckled with stars.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, he thought.
Their first priority was oxygen. Easy enough: There were masks in lockers lining the bulkhead nearby.
But the outer hatch had to finish closing first.
The slap of the mechanism came as a small shudder through the shuttle. Connor hopped down, going to the deck with both women.
He let them go and shambled to the nearest locker, pulling out a mask. It covered his face and had an air supply.
Sweet, sweet oxygen!
There was no time to appreciate that. He grabbed a mask for each woman and hopped back, first covering the pilot’s face, then the engineer’s.
After a few seconds, both were breathing.
So, they were alive. But the shuttle…
He stepped back and got his first look at the damage in the strobing amber warning lights.
Martienne had done something to slow their inertia, but it hadn’t been enough to prevent the shuttle from crashing into the hangar bay hard. The vehicle nose was flattened against the malformed forward and starboard bulkheads, and the left wing was crumpled.
So, the shuttle wasn’t going to be used to get back down to the planet.
Air blasted down from vents. The hangar bay was re-pressurizing.
Connor headed back to the ladies.
Drew’s eyes popped open. Her lips moved.
He pressed his mask against hers. “You hear me?”
“Yes.” Her voice was muffled but understandable.
“The shuttle’s a wreck. We lost atmosphere.”
The engineer looked at the unconscious pilot. “I think she redirected the cabin atmosphere to fire off thrusters at the last second.”
“Is that possible?”
“She knows the shuttle better than anyone.”
The warning lights powered off.
Connor picked the pilot up. “We need to get her to the infirmary. She’s bleeding.”
Drew led the way, up the ramp, past the galley, and into the infirmary. It felt like a furnace after the cold of the ride up.
Connor set the pilot on a treatment bed, then took his mask off and set that on the adjacent bed. He coughed at the sharp difference in the sterile air. “You know any first aid?”
“Not really.” Drew set her mask next to his.
“I’ve done stitches. Glue. I held a lady while a doctor reset her arm.”
“No, thank you.”
“I’m the same way.” He brushed hair away from the wound. “That’s a nasty gash.”
“She’ll live, right?”
“She has to. Everyone makes it back.”
Drew chewed her bottom lip. She looked ready to question the statement. Instead, she grabbed the masks from the bed. “I need to check hull integrity after that landing. I’ll take these back down. Can you do this on your own?”
“Sure. After so long, I know where the equipment and medicine is.” Cabinets, drawers—he began pulling them open to gather swabs, alcohol, and all the other things he’d taken out for Lem to use for such work. “I’ll have to radio Selen. She needs to know that the shuttle…”
“I know.” The engineer’s shoulder’s sagged. “At least we made it.”
He smiled, trying to project the optimism they needed now.
When he started cleaning the wound, Drew turned and scraped out of the infirmary.
Something fluttered to the deck as the hatch closed. It didn’t seem critical—something Drew had dropped, maybe.
He set his pocket computer on the bed where the oxygen masks had been.
The stopwatch was still running. He powered it off and connected to the bridge and the radio system. “Connect to Selen.”
A chime from the computer told him it was handling the request.
Connor washed his hands, then took out a pair of sanitary gloves but stopped before pulling them on. Whatever had fallen to the deck kept catching his eye.
“Hello?” The voice came from the computer: Selen.
“Selen. You okay? Is everyone okay?”
“We’re alive. Did you make it?”
He chuckled. His throat burned. His butt still felt like a dozen sewing machines were fast-stitching across his cheek. Even his shoulders ached. “We made it. The shuttle didn’t.”
“I’m looking at the bright side. All of you?”
“All of us made it, yeah.” He squatted beside the thing on the floor, then picked the item up. “Martienne’s a mess. I’m trying to clean her scalp up.”
“What happened?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. I wanted you to know we’re here.”
“That’s great to hear.” Selen cleared her throat. “We’re waiting on you.”
“Let me do what I can with Martienne. I’ll get back to you.”
He disconnected and set the thing he’d taken from the floor on the bed next to the computer. Martienne’s wound needed his attention—he understood that. Still, the thing Drew had dropped kept drawing his eye back.
It was an empty wrapper for Dustoff—the same drug she’d been fired for using years ago.
Ill Fortune
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