Dreamspy. Jacqueline Lichtenberg
on. An acrid tang diffused from the air registers. Curled in fetal position, her muscles locked in spasm, she endured somewhere outside of time.
Eventually, it was over. Her body went limp. She was still breathing, so the Window had to be intact. Smoke had fogged the transparent bubble above her and swirled in the air, though near the floor, she could breathe. She might be radiation-fried, but she wasn’t bleeding. And to her complete shock, she discovered she could move.
Got to go help find the injured. She scrabbled to get her knees under her.
A sign she’d never seen before flashed over the exit hatch. BRIDGE OVERRIDE! The sealed lock clicked open.
//Kyllikki?// Lee peeped around the cowling. Then he was on his knees beside her, one arm over her shoulders. //Don’t move. Understand? I’ll get you to sick bay.//
She humped up against the pressure of his arm. “Don’t shout at me, all right?” Her voice was husky, and her throat felt as if she’d been screaming.
“Shout?” he whispered. What’s the matter with her?
She pulled away, clamping her hands to her head. The key image to the working realm was burned into the back of her mind and would not darken and disappear. Lee’s mind was washing through her, uncontrolled. Barriers. Come on. Image. Make the image. She found the wall of silver bricks, mirror-bright on the outside, half-transparent from the inside, showing the outer world dim but undistorted.
“Kyllikki? What are you doing?”
The edge of panic in Lee’s voice, reinforced by a vibrant mental bleed-through of fear, went right through her.
She wanted to turn on him, to shove him out the hatch, get away from him. “Barriers,” she gasped.
He withdrew his hands and she apperceived the thick felt damper he folded around himself. Sound analogue. They do everything with sound analogues. He was not using an image, yet she apperceived his effort as an image.
With supreme determination, she pulled herself to her feet, coughed and rubbed tears from her eyes. “Thanks. I’ve got it now. We’ve got to go help—”
“Abandon ship. Captain’s orders.” He coughed. “Fires. Damage control in the hold inoperative. We’ve got weapons in that hold as cargo. The Captain was informed by Main Data only after damage control failed.” He urged her toward the lock. “The ship is going to go up in a matter of minutes.”
And he came to pry me out of here.
She squeezed through the lock, which had jammed halfway open. The lounge was a tumbled mess, filled with smoke. They found breathing masks and emergency gear, fastened the belts around them, and forged out into the corridor.
People were moving swiftly, with determination. There was no panic, but the babble of voices that filled the air was edged with terror. In moments, the ship’s uniforms made Kyllikki and Lee the target for the helpless and confused.
They split up, trying to help everyone, beating their way toward their assigned evacuation stations.
Using an emergency lantern, Kyllikki ushered people down dark side corridors and into life pods, stacking them in by the numbers, preventing fatal overcrowding, disregarding species preferences for speed. “That’s all for this one!” she shouted more than once. “The rest of you follow me!” And she forged back through the press to another pod slip.
Even after the three mandatory drills and five extra ones the Captain had required, the passengers couldn’t find their way around through the dim smoke.
Occasionally, she encountered another crewmember, exchanged a quick “See you on Barkyr!” or traded power cells or breathing packs. Not all of Prosperity’s emergency equipment worked. At one point, she provided a bandage pack to a Paitsmun, the very one who had criticized her arrogant manners. He was very grateful for her help in dealing with the wound of a soft-fleshed Zund.
Gradually, the noise diminished, the thump-whump of launching pods ceased, and Kyllikki began to wonder how she, herself, might get off. The standard launch pattern had not been followed. Her assigned pod had probably been launched.
She made her way aft, considering that passengers who couldn’t find their own pods wouldn’t have located the crew’s pods or the extra ones. People who knew where the explosives were probably wouldn’t head toward them. Most of the unused pods would be in the crew’s quarters or behind Cargo and Stores.
She passed a lounge where the ceiling had fallen. There were body parts protruding from the rubble, no sign of movement. But, despite her own pain, she had to stop and scan for life. There was none. Beyond that, she came to a pressure barrier slammed across a corridor. Crew’s quarters.
The hold, then. She turned and shimmied down an access tube, crawled through a smoke filled duct, and battered her way out the duct’s register into the cargo area. Here she could barely hear the beat of the emergency announcements and alarms. Her light carved a tunnel through the smoke, and she scanned for signs of life as she went, glad that she had the map of the ship engraved in her memory.
And then she felt them. Familiar. Desperate. Which way? She wasted precious seconds trying to listen mentally, then remembered she could still speak. “Idom! Zuchmul!” Her worn voice was husky and muffled by the breathing mask.
She advanced, flashing her light this way and that, certain they had to be at one of the pod hatches in the bulkhead in front of her. “Zuchmul! Idom! Zuchmul!”
“Kyllikki?” It was the luren’s voice. “This way!”
His Influence grew to a flare, then cut off with a guilty start. He’s not wearing his Inhibitor! Then she remembered. Zuchmul had been on his way to feed. The only time he was permitted to set the inhibiting device aside was when he was using his Influence on his food animals, a physiological imperative.
A dim glow emerged from the smoke and gradually became a pair of emergency lanterns. Two shadows developed into Idom and Zuchmul struggling with a tumbled pile of crates that blocked a pod hatch with glowing ready lights. Together, they heaved, and the last of the crates crashed aside. Idom smacked the control and the hatch swung open.
Zuchmul grabbed Kyllikki’s elbow and propelled her toward the opening ahead of him. Knees sagging, she took one last look around and suddenly realized which pod ejector she was entering. It would throw the pod straight aft.
“No!” She pulled back, breaking the luren’s hold.
“We’re the last aboard,” said Idom. “Come on!”
“No!” She pointed. “We’ve got to get down to that pod! This one will hit a flight of proximity mines! Come on!”
They followed as she beat her way aft and starboard, in one place crawling over containers that might well be the weapons no passenger liner should be carrying. No. If they were here, they could have been jettisoned manually.
They found another pod hatch with ready lights showing but the controls didn’t open the portal. “Here, let me!” Zuchmul shouldered her aside and ripped the panel open, studying the circuitry. “Stand back.” He snatched a tool from his belt and rammed it into the mechanism.
The door flicked open faster than it was supposed to. “What if it doesn’t close?” she asked.
Idom said, “Decompression will stop the fire. In this hold, anyway. Go!”
They piled in, and the pod’s own hatch closed. The launch was rougher than she remembered from the drills, but they were away and safe.
In unison, they lifted their breathing masks and took huge breaths.
Zuchmul went to the control board and glanced over the displays. “Anyone trained to fly this thing?”
“Not me,” said Idom. “I thought you—”
“Not me,” asserted Zuchmul. The two looked at Kyllikki.
“I was trained as