Admiral Stonefist and Kinnit marched down the hallway in lockstep, heading for the Star Deck. The security crew scrambled along behind, a motley clattering of footfalls and arrhythmia that annoyed Grimthorn more than he'd thought it would.
Kinnit, sensing his tension, laid a hand on his arm.
"They're civilians, sir. They've never trained for marching."
He nodded, his mouth in a set line.
"That means they'll be unpredictable. Who knows how many will even stand their ground, when the time comes?"
"The military didn't make you courageous, sir. They'll have courage or cowardice on their own."
He set his jaw as though he were going to argue with her, but sighed instead.
"'The Navy didn't make the Imperium, the Imperium made the Navy.' You've studied your philosophers."
She didn't reply, but a small, self-satisfied smile crept into her face, and she marched with a little extra bounce in her step.
They arrived at the entrance to the star deck. The crackling and thudding of the Oryndrax attack was a constant background static now, forcing Grimthorn to raise his voice to be heard.
"We're going to defend Engineering," he said. "That's the checkmate move for the bugs. If they can get to the reactor, it's game over for us. Nothing, and I mean nothing else matters more than defending Engineering. Understood?"
A disjointed round of "yes, sir"s came back in reply. Grimthorn nodded. They weren't military, but they were what he had. He'd make it work.
He had to.
He paneled open the door, and the sound of the attack spiked. As the small force slowly spilled out onto the Star Deck, the magnitude of the attack became clear to the security forces for the first time.
The dome protecting the star deck was completely white, occluded by pale Vylar fighters. They swarmed the Ophir in layers, making continuous strafing runs on the shields. The shields crackled whenever a fighter's blaster hit it, and thudded when one of the fighters misjudged a strafing run and slammed into it.
The Oryndrax were at least as dangerous to each other as they were to the Ophir. As the horrified civilian security watched, the Vylar fighters blasted at the Ophir with no regard for the safety of their fellows, sometimes deliberately shooting down one of their own comrades if they got in the way of a good shot.
"Focus, people," Grimthorn barked. "We're coming into the Star Deck at Exit A right now. We'll be heading for Exit C. That's the fastest way to engineering. Let's move. Kinnit, you bring up the rear. Let's not have any stragglers."
The group jogged across the Star Deck in a disorganized cluster, tripping on each other, stepping on each other's heels.
"Spread out!" Grimthorn called. "Leave each other room to move--"
The crackling and thudding quieted suddenly. Every eye swiveled to the dome overhead.
The shields had failed.
"Okay, move!" Grimthorn shouted. "Steady but speedy. It'll take them a couple minutes to shoot through that dome."
Much later, Grimthorn reflected bitterly that, despite having told Kinnit to think like a bug, he'd failed to think like a bug himself.
Instead of shooting at the dome, the Vylar fighters simply slammed into it, one after another, in an unending stream. The entire dome bounced and flexed like a giant bubble, and the sound of the exploding fighters reflected tremendously in the Star Deck. Swept with sudden terror, the Ophir crew broke and ran for Exit C.
Well, most of them did.
Three of them, the ones furthest in the rear, tried to run back the way they came.
"Wait!" Kinnit yelled. "Not that way!" She turned back to try and catch them, and the dome cracked wide open.
The dome had been assembled from curved hexes of pure crystal plexan, fitted together with laser-tight perfection. The engineers who'd designed the Ophir, to their considerable credit, had designed the dome with catastrophic failure in mind. When the dome failed, it failed across its entirety, all at once. It split apart, sending thousands of beautiful crystal hexagons spinning away into the swirling Vylar fighters. Since the whole dome failed simultaneously, the atmosphere on the Star Deck gushed gently into space, rather than forcibly squeezing the bodies of all the security forces through a pinhole leak.
The sudden wind of the dome failure buffeted the security force, sweeping a few off their feet. Three men were blown off the Star Deck completely and into the churning mass of fighters. One of them was one of the men Kinnit was chasing. He shrieked as he disappeared from view.
"No!" Kinnit cried.
The other two men made it back through Exit A. Kinnit followed them, struggling against the escaping atmosphere, trying to get to the exit before the air ran out entirely.
She didn't quite make it. The emergency shutters slammed down, trapping about half the security crew on the Star Deck, along with Kinnit and Admiral Stonefist.
The security uniforms had built-in emergency thinsuit helmet bubbles that deployed automatically in a vacuum. Kinnit squeaked in alarm as the clear plastic flapped out from a hidden panel behind the collar of her coat and wrapped around her head. A thin bubble inflated around her face and a trickle of air leaked in.
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It took her a moment to realize what had happened, but relief flooded her as air filled her lungs.
She glanced at the shutters. Thankfully, they had small, rotating airlock capsules built in, similar to the ones in the Stone Pirate towship, so the crew wasn't trapped on the deck. It would take a while for all of them to get through, but they could quickly get back into the pressurized area.
She looked at Grimthorn to point out the airlocks, only to find that he was already cycling men through the Exit C airlock and into the interior of the ship.
With sudden horror, she realized he didn't have a thinsuit helmet on. He'd been too busy organizing the security men to get a security uniform for himself. He was still in his dress blues. And yet he was getting others to safety before getting back inside where he could breathe.
She ran over to him at top speed-- the gravity was still working, at least-- and fumbled at the tiny hose that connected the emergency air supply to her head bubble. She popped it free and held it to his mouth.
He nodded gratefully and took a small sip of air as he cycled another security man through. She tried to fit the tiny hose back into her helmet, but it flopped and flexed and wouldn't seat properly. She pulled off the thinsuit helmet and took a small breath from the air supply.
They traded sips of air from her hose as Grimthorn cycled the rest of the men into the ship safely until only the two of them were left. He gave her a warm smile and a thumbs up. She pointed to herself, then at the airlock, raising her eyebrows quizzically.
Grimthorn, his mouth pinched tightly shut, shook his head and pointed Kinnit back at Exit A. She nodded, understanding. They were going to need every shooter they could get, coward or not. She had to go find the security men who'd run away and bring them to Engineering.
She dashed back to Exit A. She leaned back into the man-shaped divot and reached up with her right hand for the handle that would cycle her into the ship. As she did so, she got to see the first fighter land.
The Vylar fighters did not have much in the way of interior space, but the Insectoids had crammed themselves in tightly around the pilot. As it landed, the hatch popped open and three tall, bug-like creatures crawled out.
She raised the rifle with her left hand and blasted one of the bugs to pieces with a pinpoint-precise shot. The other two turned toward her. They were blasted from the side by Admiral Stonefist, who was already in position to cycle through Exit C.
Admiral Stonefist and Kinnit nodded to each other and cycled through at the same time.
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"That's lesson one," Grimthorn said to the men around him. "If you're going to be caught in a vacuum, empty your lungs first."
The security men, in various stages of panic, gasped and heaved.
"Let's get moving," Grimthorn said, weaving through the men toward Engineering.
"We just need a minute, man!" one of them yelled.
"A minute is about how long it's going to take those bugs to figure out how to work that airlock." And he jogged away without looking back.
The security men looked at each other briefly, then followed him.
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Kinnit crept down the hall, glancing at her wrist monitor. She'd rolled back the video from the ship's cameras to see where the two security men had fled, but she was unfamiliar with the layout of the Ophir, and she was having some trouble figuring out where on the map each camera was pointing.
The halls were dim and quiet. She was back somewhere near the quarters-- not the fancy suites that she and Grimthorn had gotten, but the regular cabins, stacked in rows down straight hallways.
She traced one of the men down, finally. He had collapsed from exertion and was huddled in a corner, his rifle hugged to his chest. He gibbered when he saw her, and leveled the rifle at her.
"Get away! I'm not going back out there!" he shrieked.
"Hey, hey, it's okay," she said in a soothing voice. "Nobody's going to make you go anywhere. I'm Kinnit. What's your name?"
"I'm F-Falen Horrel."
"I'm please to meet you, Falen. Can you point the rifle elsewhere, please?"
Falen's breathing sped up, the whites of his eyes clearly visible as panic took hold of him again.
"You-- you brought those things here!"
"No, they're the Oryndrax. They just... show up where they're not wanted. But we'll be all right if we can keep them out of Engineering."
"I'll shoot you! I'll shoot you!"
Kinnit slowly backed away, her hands up. Clearly Falen Horrel was not in a fit state to help with defense at the moment.
"Okay, it's okay," she said, her voice as smooth and comforting as she could make it. "I'm leaving now, Falen."
She backed up a few more steps, when the man's look of panic took on a different tone. She heard a quiet chittering sound behind her and dropped to the floor just as Falen opened fire.
She twisted around and brought up her rifle.
The Oryndrax Insectoid stood nearly seven feet tall. It had deep brown, almost black chitin covering its whole body. Beady black eyes ran the length of its head, and its long, slender antennae twitched as it sampled the air. Kinnit shuddered in revulsion. Its arms were slim and barbed, and held a lethal-looking rifle. It raised it at the panicking security man.
Falen continued spraying fire wildly down the hall. Kinnit popped two clean shots through the Oryndrax soldier's chest. The Insectoid crumpled to the floor leaking steaming ichor. Kinnit rolled into the corner where the wall met the floor. Falen kept firing.
At long last, he ran out of ammo. Kinnit took a second to catch her breath. Then she stood and stormed over to Falen.
"Don't shoot at me!" she yelled, and snatched the empty rifle out of his hands. Then she kicked him in the face and stormed away.
She almost immediately regretted kicking him, but she was too furious to apologize right now. Perhaps she'd been spending too much time around the Admiral.
Though, as she marched away, she was troubled by a thought. Why had an Insectoid shown up way back here in the quarters? Shouldn't they all be headed to Engineering?
Falen Horrel lay in the corner, quietly blubbering to himself.
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The main entrance to Engineering was at the end of a long, narrow hallway. Piles of furniture and old equipment made jumbled piles all down the hallway. Admiral Stonefist had directed the security men to set up those barricades to slow the bugs down.
They'd sealed all the doors behind them, but it would only be a matter of time before they cut their way through.
"Do you have an emergency reactor cooler?" Grimthorn asked one of the techs.
"Of course. Do you want us go ahead and hook it into the reactor?"
"No. If the bugs get that far, we're already done. Let me see it."
The tech rolled out a heavy tank with a thick hose attached. The hose tapered to a thin nozzle that was designed to slot into a special port on the reactor, so it could flood the reactor chamber with high-pressure coolant in an emergency.
"Great, thanks. Cut that nozzle off for me."
"I'm sorry?"
"Cut the nozzle off. We're going to spray down the hallway. Walls and ceiling."
The tech stood there, dumbfounded. Grimthorn was beginning to miss the military incompetence he was used to.
"The reactor coolant is super-slippery, right?" Grimthorn asked. The tech nodded dumbly. "Now, you've seen bugs, right? Regular bugs?" The tech nodded again. "And they climb walls." Recognition finally dawned on the tech's face. "We don't want that. It's hard enough just fighting them on the ground. So we'll spray the walls and ceiling with this stuff so they can't climb."
"Oh. But is that safe? I don't know if I'm supposed to cut the nozzle off."
Admiral Stonefist bit back a reply. He could almost hear Kinnit in the back of his mind, reminding him: "Civilians, sir."
With dwindling patience, he prepared for the bugs.