She hadn’t spent much of her time on environmental decks. Most of her work before with Stanni and Soledad had been with power routing. The air and water systems had technicians of their own, specialists at a higher pay grade than hers. The architecture of the rooms kept everything close without being as cramped as the Cerisier. She floated in with a sense of relief, as if reaching her goal accomplished something in itself. As if it gave her some measure of control.
The air smelled of ozone and burned hair. A young man, face covered with blue-black bruises, was stuck to the bulkhead with a rope and two electromagnets. He waved something similar to a broom with a massive mesh of fabric on the end like a gigantic fly swatter. Clearing blood from the air. His damaged face was impassive, shocked. A thickening layer of tears encased his eyes, blinding him.
“You! Who the hell are you?”
Melba turned. The new man wore a navy uniform. His right leg was in an inflatable pressure cast. The foot sticking out the end was a bluish purple, and his breath was labored in a way that made her think of pneumonia, of internal bleeding.
“Melba Koh. Civilian electrochemical tech off the Cerisier.”
“Who do you answer to?”
“Mikelson’s my group supervisor,” she said, struggling to remember the man’s name. She had only met him once, and he hadn’t left much of an impression on her.
“My name’s Nikos,” the broken-legged man said. “You work for me now. Come on.”
He pushed off more gracefully than should have been possible. She followed him a little too fast and had to grab a handhold to keep from running into his back. He led her through a long passageway into engineering. A huge array of thin metal and ceramic sheets stood at one wall, warnings in eight languages printed along its side. Scorch marks drew circles on the outermost plate, and the air stank of burnt plastic and something else. A hole two feet across had been punched through the center. A human body was still in it, held in place by shards of metal.
“You know what that is, Koh?”
“Air processing,” she said.
“That’s the primary atmosphere processing unit,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “And it’s a big damn problem. Secondary processor’s still on fire just at the moment, and the tertiary backups will get us through for about seven hours. Everyone on my team is busted or dead, so you’re about to rebuild this one. Understand?”
I can’t do that, she thought. I’m not really an electrochemical technician. I don’t know how to do this.
“I’ll… get my tools.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said. “If I find someone can help out, I’ll send ’em your way.”
“That would be good,” she said. “What about you? Are you all right? Can you help?”
“At a guess? Crushed pelvis, maybe something worse going on in my gut. Keep passing out a little,” he said with a grin. “But I’m high as a kite on the emergency speed, and there’s work. So hop to.”
She pushed off. Her throat was tight, and she could feel her mind starting to shut down. Overstimulation. Shock. She made her way through the carnage and wreckage to the storage bay where the toolboxes from the Cerisier were. Her card unlocked them. One had shattered, the remains of a testing deck floating in the air, green ceramic shards and bits of gold wire. Ren was there, his coffin toolbox shifted in place despite the electromagnetic clamps. For a moment, the dream of the fire washed over her. She wondered if she might still be sleeping, the wave of death just part of the same blackness in her own brain. She put her hand on Ren’s box, half expecting to feel him knocking back. A sudden vertigo washed through her, and the sense that she and the ship were falling, that it would land on her. Crush her. All the blood and all the terror, every dead person held in place to keep the corpses from floating, they all began here. Every sin she’d committed, backward and forward in time, had its center in the bones beneath her hand.
“Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”
She took her tool chest, the real one, and sped back to engineering and the shattered air processing controller. Nikos had found two other people, a man in civilian dress and an older woman in naval uniform.
“You’re Koh?” the woman said. “Good, grab his legs.”
Melba set her toolbox against the deck and activated the magnets, then pushed over to the hole in the atmosphere processor. The machine had been loosened from its housing, giving the body a little more room to move. Melba put her hands on the dead man’s thighs, wadding the cloth of his trousers in her fists. She braced herself against the metal siding of the unit.
“Ready?” the man asked.
“Ready.”
The woman counted down from three, and Melba pulled. For a long moment, she thought the corpse wouldn’t come out, but then something tore, the vibrations of it transferring through to her hands. The body slid free.
“Score one for the good guys,” Nikos said from across the bay. His face was developing an ashy gray tone. Like he was dying. She wished he would go to the medical bays, but they were probably swamped. He could die here doing his work, or there waiting for an open bay. “Clear him away. Got him out, we don’t need him drifting back.”
Melba nodded, took a firm grip, and pushed off on a trajectory that would land them on the far bulkhead. The back of the corpse’s head had been crushed almost flat, but death had come so swiftly, there was very little blood. At the wall, she secured him with a spray of foam and held him for a moment while it set. The dead man’s face was close to hers. She could see the whiskers he’d missed when he’d shaved. The brown of his empty eyes. She felt a sudden urge to kiss him and then pushed the impulse away, disgusted.
From his uniform, he’d been an officer. Lieutenant, maybe. The white identity card on the lanyard around his neck had a picture of him looking solemn. She took it in her fingers. Not lieutenant. Lieutenant commander. Lieutenant Commander Stepan Arsenau, who would never have come through the Ring if it weren’t for her. Who wouldn’t have died here. She tried to feel guilt, but there wasn’t room for him inside of her. She had too much blood already.
She was reaching out to tuck his card back in place when the small voice in the back of her mind said, I bet he could get an EVA pack with this. Melba blinked. Her mind seemed to click back into focus, and she looked around her, the last wisps of dream or delirium leaving her mind. She had access to the equipment she needed. The ship was in chaos. This was it. This was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She plucked the card off its lanyard and slipped it in her pocket, then looked around nervously.