Chapter 22: A Chance To Survive

Elena stared up at him with her chest was heaving.

A lock of honey-blonde hair was stuck to her sweaty forehead and for one second, the memory of him diving out of a third-floor window into open vacuum just to catch her wrist flashed across her eyes.

...Then she shoved his hand off her arm and lifted her chin with a sharp shaky glare.

"Get your hands off me, you bossy brute!"

But she was already turning toward the ladder.

"If I let a common mechanic like you touch an S-Rank railgun, you’d wire it backwards and blow the roof off! Open the hatch, and stay on my channel so you can work the lift when I call the pins!"

"Jin-Ah, Sensei, bridge with me! Now!" Leo ordered, boosting Elena up into the narrow crawlspace.

Then he turned to the other three.

"Harper, Chloe, Camila. You hold the cargo bay. If anything chews through before that gun goes live, keep it off the main power line with whatever you’ve got."

"Count on it, Cap."

Harper held out her hand to Camila without a word. Camila looked at her for a second, then pressed her carbine into Harper’s palm.

"Six shots," she said. "You’re better with it than me."

"I’m better with everything than you, Chica~" Harper grinned. "But I love you for saying it."

The bronze shimmer of Kinetic Tuning wrapped around the borrowed gun.

Leo, Jin-Ah, and Sensei pounded up the stairs toward the bridge and up inside the cramped, pitch-black spine of the ship, between the ceiling and the outer hull, Elena crawled forward on her hands and knees through a tangle of dusty pipes and spitting relays.

[Hull Integrity: 20%... 19%...]

SKRRRRT-CRUNCH!

Right above her back, on the other side of a thin roof plate, a nine-meter worm slid across the top of the ship, grinding its teeth against the seams as it hunted for the main copper line.

The plate dented inward right over her shoulder blades.

Flakes of old rust and freezing condensation rained down into her hair.

"Ugh! Filthy, repulsive vermin!" she hissed into her mic, wriggling through a narrow rib-ring toward the staging chute where the turret was waiting. "Leo! Are you on the bridge yet, or did your short legs get lost on the stairs?! There is a nine-meter maggot chewing on the roof right above my backside!"

Up on the bridge, Leo threw himself into the throne and slammed his palms down onto the crystal cradles.

ZAP!

The ship’s internal systems bloomed across his vision...

The Dorsal hatch actuators, lift pistons and a small warm heat signature crawling slowly through the narrow roof tube.

"I’m right here in your ear, Princess," he said. "Keep moving... Two more meters and for the record, my legs are longer than yours. If you’d stop worrying about your hair getting dusty, you’d be there already."

"My hair is full of rust because of your suicidal salvage plan, you insufferable stray!"

But the sound of his voice right in her ear steadied the shaking in her hands.

She reached the round mounting collar of Dorsal Bay 1.

Above it, the massive black barrels of the turret sat waiting in the chute, gleaming.

"I’m at the chute!" she called. "The four locking lugs are seized solid with corrosion and the alignment ring is warped four millimeters off-center! If you push the turret up now, it’ll shear the bolts clean off!"

"Then put those billion-dollar hands on the collar and find the release," Leo said.

His voice dropped into something steady and focused that cut right through the horrible grinding all around her.

"Don’t look at the rust, Elena... Close your eyes and listen to the metal, like you did in the vault... Tell me which lug needs pressure first..."

In the dark, ribs pressed flat against the freezing floor, with worm teeth shrieking against the roof plate centimeters from her spine, Elena squeezed her eyes shut.

She pressed both palms flat against the warped collar as emerald light flared across her fingers in the pitch black.

’Listen,’ she told herself. ’Just listen.’

The metal sang to her, stressed and groaning in one spot and slack in another... binding hard, right... there.

"Lug two," she breathed.

The shrillness drained out of her voice as she slipped into that sharp cool focus.

She grabbed a heavy manual spanner off its rack and wedged it into Lug Two’s release gear.

"It’s binding against the starboard rib... Pulse the lift at twelve percent. Just enough to take the weight off the pin while I turn the cam."

"Twelve percent on your mark," Leo said quietly.

His right hand hovered over the crystal cradle with millimeter precision.

"Three... Two... One... Pulsing..."

HISS-CLUNK!

He feathered the lift with the exact same touch he used to thread asteroids, nudging two tons of turret upward by a hair.

At the exact same instant, Elena threw her whole body weight against the wrench.

CLANG!

The seized lug broke free and snapped into alignment.

"Lug two is green!" Leo called out.

"Leo." Ms. Tachibana’s voice was tight from the navigation station.

Her silver halo was flaring, mapping the hull. "There are three of them on the roof now... One is right over Elena and two more are working their way along the spine toward the turret chute. If they get to it before it rises..."

"Then we don’t let them," Leo said. "Jin-Ah, how’s the power?!"

At station three, Jin-Ah was sweating, her fingers flying across holographic breakers.

The ship was sitting at thirty percent after the core recall.

Routing fifteen of that into the turret would leave only fifteen percent to keep everyone breathing until they could install the new core.

[This unit would like it on record that fifteen percent is very little... This unit is going to be doing math in a cold sweat but this unit does not sweat so this unit is going to start.]

"Bypassing the burned relays now!" Jin-Ah shouted. "Elena! The thick red cable along your left knee! Do NOT touch it! It’s going to be carrying forty thousand volts in ten seconds!"

Before Elena could even move her knee—

KRA-KOOOOOM!

Down at the back of the ship, in the cargo bay, the corroded seal near the starboard landing strut finally gave way under three sets of teeth at once.

A section of the lower wall tore inward like a ripped can.

[BREACH: Cargo bay, lower starboard!]

[Emergency foam deploying!]

[...Warning. One worm has forced its upper body inside the cargo bay. It is currently functioning as a very large, very angry cork.]

Foam sprayed frantically around the hole, sealing the edges before the air could blow out.

But through the middle of it, the front five meters of a worm came thrashing into the room.

Its teeth spun, dripping green acid, and it lunged straight for the thick power trunk running up the wall toward the bridge.

"OH, NO YOU DON’T, YOU UGLY BASTARD!" Harper roared.

She dropped to one knee six meters back as bronze light blazed up her arms.

She waited for it to open its jaws around the power line...

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

Three rounds straight into the hinge of its upper jaw.

[Harper: 3/15]

Violet blood sprayed across the walls as the worm reared back in agony and whipped its head around toward Harper and Camila but it never reached them.

A small shadow blurred across the deck.

Chloe leaped onto the back of its neck, wrapped one arm around its head in a literal headlock, and planted her boots into the floor. Her fangs were fully out and her eyes burned pure crimson.

She wrestled five meters of thrashing monster to a dead standstill with one arm.

It slammed her into a stack of cargo crates.

CRASH!

She didn’t let go.

"Stay STILL!" Chloe snarled.

With her free hand, she jammed the barrel of her carbine straight into its open throat.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-CLICK!

All five rounds, point-blank, into its brain.

[Chloe: 0/15]

The worm convulsed once and went limp, still plugging the hole like a dead cork.

"Gross," Camila whispered. "Gross, gross, gross... Good job, Chloe... But gross..."

HSSSSSSS!

A thin high whistle cut through the bay and Camila’s head snapped toward it.

The worm’s acid had splashed across the lower wall during the fight, and it was still eating.

A crack was spreading through the plating beside the breach, and air was hissing out of it in a fine white stream.

"It’s leaking!" she yelled. "There’s a crack! It’s leaking!"

She didn’t have a gun anymore and she didn’t have a talent for fighting.

Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely make them work but she ran for the emergency locker anyway.

She ripped a foam canister off its clip, sprinted back across the bay, jammed the nozzle against the crack, and squeezed with both hands.

FSSSHHHHH!

Thick white foam swelled into the crack and hardened in seconds. The whistle choked down then stopped.

Camila stood there panting, the empty canister clutched to her chest.

"...I did it," she breathed. "I actually did a thing!"

"You absolutely did a thing!" Harper cheered.

[Leak sealed... Crew Unit: Camila’s contribution has been logged. This unit is proud of her but this unit would like that to stay between us.]

Up in the crawlspace, the shockwave of the fight shook the whole ship.

Elena’s wrench slipped off the fourth and final lug at the exact same moment the worm on the roof bit down hard on the hatch seam above her.

A black tooth punched straight down through a vent grommet ten centimeters in front of her face.

"AHH!"

She jerked backward and slammed her head against the rib above her.

The collar on Lug Four started to slip under the vibration.

Two tons of turret began to sink... straight down toward her trapped forearm.

"Elena! Talk to me!" Leo’s voice roared in her ear as Lug Four flashed red on his screen. "Did it break through?!"

"N-no! Its tooth came through the vent right in front of my face and my arm’s stuck between the wrench and the lug!"

Her heart was hammering at a hundred and sixty.

Sparks were showering down over her shoulders as the worm ground its teeth against the plate. "The collar’s slipping! If it drops, it’ll crush my wrist!"

Up on the bridge, Leo’s heart stopped.

For one awful second, all he could see was the little heat signature on his screen, curled up in that steel tube under two tons of slipping metal.

The girl who’d made his life hell for two terms... Who’d called him a stray a hundred times... Who’d screamed his name over the void an hour ago like it was the only thing she had left...

’Not her,’ he thought. ’Not like this... Not in a crawlspace because I asked her to go up there.’

Beside him, Ms. Tachibana’s hand had gone white on the edge of her console.

"Leo," she whispered.

"I know."

He breathed out.

And his voice came out completely calm.

"Listen to my voice, Elena. Don’t pull back, push the wrench forward... Five centimeters, against the cam..."

His hands moved over the cradles, bracing the turret shaft from underneath with every servo the ship had.

"I’ve got the lift... It is NOT going to drop on you... I’ve got the weight. You just turn that last cam four degrees to the right... With me... On three."

In the dark steel coffin, with a monster chewing through the roof a hand’s width from her nose, Elena stopped panicking.

She could feel it.

The steady unbreakable pressure of Leo’s neural link, holding two tons of turret rock-solid under her hand, just like he’d held her wrist over the void.

She gritted her teeth, wiped the sweat out of her eyes against her shoulder and gripped the wrench with both hands.

"One," Leo said. "Two... THREE!"

"HAAAAAH!"

She shoved with everything she had.

KA-CLANK!

The fourth lug slammed home.

[Turret Mount: 100% LOCKED]

"Pull your hands clear!" Jin-Ah screamed, slamming the final breaker down with her palm. "Sending power NOW!"

ZZZZZZZZZZ-HUMMMMMM!

Elena yanked her arms back against her chest just as the red cable beside her knee lit up with forty thousand screaming volts and locked itself into the base of the turret.

[Ship Power: 30% ? 15%]

Above her, the roof hatch blew open into the vacuum.

THOOM!

And the S-Rank Twin-Barrel Mag-Rail Turret rose out of the spine of the Wanderer-7.

Its twin barrels, nearly three meters long, locked into place above the hull as its targeting sensor spun around in a blinding red sweep.

DING!

[S-Rank Mag-Rail Point Defense Turret... ONLINE!]

[Ammunition: Linked to Foundry tungsten reserves.]

[Targets locked: 58 hostiles at point-blank range.]

[Awaiting Master Captain’s authorization.]

[This unit has waited its entire existence for this moment... Please... Please let this unit watch...]

In the dark crawlspace beneath the turret’s base, Elena slumped back against the ribs.

She was drenched in sweat, smeared with grease and rust, her chest heaving as she glared at the green light blinking on her wrist.

Then she screamed into her mic at the very top of her lungs, her voice cracking with exhaustion and adrenaline and pure furious triumph.

"It’s wired, you arrogant bastard! Now shoot them, you stray!"