"Get to the Fire Witch's airlock." Kaplan's low words jolted Jinx.
She looked up from the pistol he'd reloaded, her nerves ramping up with her tinnitus. It wasn't some human or alien scumbag on C-Deck who had caught the void hound's attention. His eyes, sharp gleams within his therm-pro's hood, scanned the ceiling.
Cracked plaster. Banks of lights. ES vents.
Nothing that warranted a VP250 Jinn loaded with hardened shock rounds.
Jinx pulled in a breath, ice whispering through her blood. "What's going on?" She ignored the order to join his people and the Fire Witch's crew in their dock airlock. She wasn't getting within spitting distance of Heiko Tras. Not while off-duty. Not with an abduction contract out on her. It didn't matter how fond the psycho trader was of Soh, he'd—
The bite of a pistol against her side.
She froze. Kaplan had moved quickly.
Her stunner was in his hand the next instant, replacing his deadlier Jinn. Eyes like frost met hers a second before shifting back to the ceiling high overhead. "Don't argue. Just move."
"I'm going to need an explanation, you back-stabbing son of a bitch." Fury and disbelief rolled through her as he marched her through the crowd, toward the airlock. Unease struck next as she got a good look at the chamber's grim-faced occupants. A massive Atillian guarded the entrance, his dark face heavily scarred, his fists wrapped around a Wolf battle rifle. His cat eyes flicked to her, rust red, like dried blood.
Kaplan pushed her inside, past the big cat, and up against one wall. Another, leaner Atillian—twentieth-century-Earth 'surfer dude' crossed with rabid tiger—punched the door controls, sealing the airlock. Her stomach locked up. "Kaplan, what the hell is—"
"Fuck no." The vicious oath cut her off.
She snapped her gaze to the rear of the chamber. Heiko Tras strode forward, silver coat rippling, his sub-zero stare relaying just how inadequate her hood and breather were as a disguise. He knew exactly who'd got sealed in with his precious cargo.
He turned on Kaplan. "I agreed to eight passengers, but not to one of them being a fucking port CI. The pu'ta boards, she gets ejected out the biowaste port, along with your fucking head."
Eight passengers. Jinx counted Kaplan's team. Six in addition to Kaplan, all in Zex armour and ghetto coats and jackets: the two cats; Kaplan's lethal-looking cousin; a guy with a bandaged head; a young woman with Asian features with a wannabe popstar vibe; and a large, olive-skinned male with a cut across his bent nose.
Jinx nailed Kaplan with a killing look. "You planned this? What the hell?"
Kaplan held up a finger for silence and turned to his cousin. "Ensure Captain Tras and his people are ready to board. Shio, Tripp." He signalled to the wannabe popstar and the bent-nosed giant. "You're with Sun."
As the two soldiers moved to join their colleague, Kaplan's Zex-clad cousin cut Jinx a baleful glance. Her gold stare, like a bird of prey's, raised gooseflesh. A crook of her finger had Tras and his two crewmates join her at the rear of the airlock. No arguments. No drawn weapons. Scary.
"One minute fifty until AL cycle completion." The void hound with the bandaged head stepped up to the rear door's console to view the countdown. "ETD at least ten mikes. It will take a few minutes to load the warp isotopes and ready engines."
Ten minutes to departure? Jinx swung back to Kaplan. "Explain. Now."
Kaplan moved to the internal door's small window to scan the loading bay outside. "I apologise for the heavy hand. Asking for your voluntary cooperation became a moot point when the Xykeree entered the port."
Jinx held up a hand. "Hang on. The roaches have broken quarantine? Why—?" Kaplan and his team's reaction registered. The blood leached from her flesh. "Oh, shit." This wasn't a simple protocol violation.
"Jammer activities gone through the roof." The blond Atillian tapped his ear headset. "We've lost all coms, Kap. Warning port security by usual means is out."
Kaplan nodded, his eyes locked on the activity outside the chamber. "Some port officers have got the message. They're moving to spread the word and evacuate." He cocked his head as if listening—then abruptly stepped back from the door. "Everyone suit up. Closed respiration systems. Prepare for neurotoxin exposure."
Neurotoxin? Jinx's gut fell through the floor as everyone around her—Tras and his crew included—dragged up battle suit cowls from under therm-pro. Facemasks got fitted. Weapons got checked.
War images roared up in her mind: hundreds of fallen bodies. Victims of the Xykeree's natural paralytic. The aliens used an airborne form on resource raids—large-scale organic harvests.
God. She had to reach Dem.
She checked her com—cursed. The blond cat was right: extreme signal interference. No connectivity. Someone was jamming everything to hell. She couldn't reach anyone.
"Koel." Kaplan's brisk address snapped her head up. He tossed her a respiratory-gas canister, his stare grim behind the plas of his facemask. "That mix is suitable for full resp. Close your breather's system best you can. Wear your goggles to limit exposure. Any tingling fingers speak up. Anti-venom's part of our standard kit."
Her fingers already felt numb. Shock—she hoped.
"Fifty seconds to cycle completion," the void hound monitoring the countdown reported, his bandaged skull now encased in Zex armour and a high-spec facemask.
Kaplan jerked his head at Jinx. "Get ready to board."
She hurriedly replaced her O2-supplementer bottle with the breathable mix. Ignoring Kaplan's order, she moved to the dock airlock's internal door, not the external exit and Tras' ship. The loading area outside hummed. Hundreds of people, all caught up in arguments over schedules, stock, and bribes. Business as usual. Oblivious. But a few Enforcement officers wearing breathers gestured to exits, trying to usher people to them—effective as herding a nest of zormets.
High over their heads, the ceiling glowed with banks of lights.
No sign of any Xykeree. Not yet.
Thank God, because she had to go back in there.
She glanced to the door console beside her. Thirty seconds to cycle completion, until everyone else could board. It'd take another two minutes twenty for the large dock airlock to cycle again, clearing her return to the port environment.
She yanked on her goggles and checked her respiratory settings on her com. With fully closed resp, she had fifteen minutes of air. Fifteen minutes to get to A-Deck, find Dem, and evac everyone she could. Her heart rate rocketed as recall brought more unwelcome knowledge. One minute. That's all it took for the roaches' neurotoxin to act—to paralyse. God, anyone without decent breather tech would be...
She'd be dragging her friends' immobilised bodies.
"We move in twenty seconds," Kaplan ordered. "Tras, get your people ready to start engines ASAP. Koel, get to the rear."
A piercing beep. An airlock malfunction alert.
Jinx swung to the inner door's console. The countdown flashed, frozen on fourteen. "We have a problem."
Kaplan's head came up like a hound catching a scent. "They're sealing the port." He signalled his team. "Cover all points of entry. Koel, external exit, now. Fero, take her. Override the lockdown."
The blond Atillian grabbed her by the scruff of her therm-pro and hauled her with him. He shoved her up against the external door, watched by Tras, his crew, and Kaplan's unsmiling cousin, Sun. "Stay put, kitten," the cat drawled. "You don't have the claws for this fight."
"Then goddamn give me that PEP80 decorating your ankle." Jinx spared the plaz pistol a fraught glance. They were trapped in an airlock, with only crates of recyce for cover. And Kaplan had her damn stunner—which was frigging irrelevant given it would do jack shit to a Xykeree exskel.
A purr-like rumble jolted her as the cat—Fero—started bypassing safety protocols on the door's console. "A woman who knows her weapons. Maybe I'll bite you later."
"On task, Petty Officer." A cool order from Sun. Within her facemask, her hawk stare never shifted from the internal door.
Tras moved in next to Jinx, one of his hand cannons drawn, his head encased in purple Zex and plas. He eyed the brightly lit cargo hold of his ship through the external door's window. "Where's Wilkirk in this mess?" His quiet words could have sheered metal.
"Soh was on A-Deck." Jinx felt her throat constrict. "She was called in to fix the roaches' engines."
"Fuck." Tras cut his gaze to the far door. He released the safety off his gun.
A sleeker pistol was at his temple in an instant—Sun's. "There'll be no heroes today, Captain." The woman's voice held irritation, not fear. "Only surviv—"
The airlock plunged into darkness. The far window went black, the loading area outside losing its lights.
Jinx's heart rate tripled.
"They're not going to wait for the paralytic to take effect." Sun shifted her aim to the far door. Her mask, like everyone else's, faded to opaque, going into night mode to hide its HUD. "The local use of breathers has probably forced their hand."
A shadow moved by the internal door's window—Kaplan. "Small infantry. Entering via the ES."
A muffled scream.
The internal door's window lit up, the eerie flash of plasma weaponry. Then the boom of a mech pistol sounded. Yelling came next. More shrieks.
Beyond the far door, C-Deck erupted into violence. A blast of noise: impacts—bullets—hammering the outside of the airlock.
Jinx ducked, cursing.
"Xykeree crawlers returning fire." Kaplan slipped back from the entrance, the brilliant green of plaz bolts reflected in his mask. "They're targeting limbs. Disabling, not killing."
"Mercy's not what I'm sensing." Sun lifted her pistol in the strobe light of hot discharges, aiming the weapon at the chamber's roof. "Five life forms six metres above us, in the vent system."
Kaplan, along with the other members of his team, raised their weapons to cover the door and the airlock's main vent. "Fero, get this air can open."
The Atillian grunted. "Twenty more seconds."
Over the booms and screams outside, scrabbling sounded. Then tapping—overhead. In the chamber's vent system.
Jinx braced herself. Memories of laser light and scrambling black legs reared up. "Tras, give me a gun."
"Hell's still above zero, pu'ta." The tech trader gripped his hand cannon. "Stay down and out of the damn way."
A bang. Then a loud clang as the vent's grate fell in.
"Stun incoming!" Kaplan dropped behind crates of recyce, his team and the Fire Witch's crew falling in spooky synchronicity.
Jinx hit the floor a second behind them. A large body—the Atillian Fero—rolled on top of her, punching out her breath.
A blinding blast.
Then gunfire.