What Judgments Come

Considering what was about to happen, she decided the analogy was apt.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Get out of here,” Davis replied, not turning from the monitors.

Zh’Rhun shook her head. “You first.” Each had already stated for the record—and in Davis’s case that included a possible charge of insubordination and disobedience of lawful orders—that neither would leave without the other, and Davis was determined to remain on task as long as necessary. Staring at his face, illuminated as it was by the glow of viewscreens and status displays, zh’Rhun comprehended the man’s resolve, seeing that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for his shipmates. There was no way she was going to leave him here to do that alone.

“How much time?” she asked.

Davis grimaced, squinting from droplets of sweat ru

“I’m thinking less,” she said.

She flinched at the sound of Mahmud al-Khaled’s voice bursting from the wall-mounted intercom. “ Al-Khaled to zh’Rhun. Everybody’s out, Commander!”

“That’s it!” zh’Rhun said, grabbing Davis by the shoulder and pulling him away from the console. “Time to go!”

“Wait!” Davis said, extending his arms as though stretching for the workstation. “We can’t!”

Zh’Rhun heaved the lieutenant ahead of her and pushed him toward the exit. “It’s over. Move!” She tried to ignore the sounds of metal coming apart behind her, concentrating instead on the sounds of her boots against the deck plates as she closed the distance to the hatch. Davis, ru

As the door sealed, Davis hit another control and a status indicator on the panel with the label bay decompressing illuminated. A deep rumble made its way through the bulkheads, and zh’Rhun felt a mild reverberation in the deck beneath her feet as the cargo bay’s outer hatch was opened while the compartment still possessed an atmosphere. In her mind’s eye she pictured the bay’s contents being blasted toward the now open hatch as everything in the room was vented into space.

Then, something—the Shedai, of course—slammed into the hatch right in front of them.

No.She did not know why she should be surprised. After all, what was a decompressed cargo bay to an entity that had already demonstrated its ability to traverse interstellar distances without any known form of space vessel?

“I think our plan has a few holes in it,” Davis said, seemingly an echo to zh’Rhun’s own thoughts.

“ Bridge to zh’Rhun,” echoed Captain Okagawa’s voice over the intercom. “ Where the hell are you?”

“Come on,” zh’Rhun said, grabbing Davis by the arm and pulling him along with her as she began to sprint the length of corridor toward the access boom. Standing in the doorway, waving for them to hurry, were al-Khaled and Xiong.

“Move!” al-Khaled shouted.

Behind zh’Rhun, another impact against the bulkhead echoed in the hallway, and this time it was accompanied by the rush of escaping oxygen. Another alarm sounded in the corridor, and she recognized it as the alert for a hull rupture. They were less than ten meters from the hatch when it slid shut, blocking their escape and hiding al-Khaled and Xiong from view. Halting their advance, they turned in time to see a black mass ripping through the corridor’s interior bulkheads before the pressure door ahead of it closed, sealing the two officers in a ten-meter section of passageway. Decompression protocols were in effect, with containment doors closing throughout the ship, sealing their respective compartments and preventing the entire vessel from being compromised.

“Shit!” Davis said, his eyes wide and his voice rising.

In response to his obscenity, something punctured the hatch leading back to the cargo bay, and a long, black spike thrust itself through the metal. Once again, zh’Rhun heard the hiss of air escaping into space.

From the control panel positioned next to the door that would have been their portal to escape, the intercom flared to life with Captain Okagawa’s voice. “ We’re picking up a hull breach. All containment hatches are in place. Is everyone out of there?”

“No” was all zh’Rhun had time to say before the hiss became a roar.

The decompression alarm howled in the corridor just as the pressure hatch began to shift, and Xiong pulled al-Khaled back before the door could slice him in half.

“Watch it!” he said, yanking the engineer almost off balance before the hatch sealed with a resounding click. With the hull breach, Xiong knew the emergency doors spaced throughout the ship would be closed, which he recalled was normal operating procedure on older vessels like the Lovell. The ancient Daedalus-class ship was from another era, before emergency containment force fields and other protective measures had become standard equipment on modern starships.

Slamming his fist against the hatch, al-Khaled released a grunt of rage. “No!” Then, training and experience seemed to reassert themselves as he turned to the control panel set into the bulkhead beside the door. Xiong saw that the panel was more than a simple door or intercom panel, as it also contained controls for overseeing emergency protocols such as separating the hulls. There was an intercom, as well, and Captain Okagawa’s voice erupted from it.

“We’re picking up a hull breach. All containment hatches are in place. Is everyone out of there?”

Though he reached for the intercom to reply, al-Khaled was stopped when he and Xiong heard the simple response from Commander zh’Rhun.

“ No.”

The bulkheads and deck plates shuddered around them as the compartment was rocked by a series of muffled explosions, and instinct made Xiong reach toward the nearby wall for support. “What was that?” he asked, before realizing what it must be, and he looked to the control panel to see a large indicator glowing bright yellow and illuminating the words SEPARATION SEQUENCE INITIATED.

“Damn it!” al-Khaled said, looking from the console to the hatch and back again as he processed what was happening. “Bridge!” he called to the intercom, “zh’Rhun and Davis are still over there! Can you lock onto them with transporters?”

There was a pause—slight but there nonetheless—before Okagawa replied.

“ It’s too late.”

Everyone on the Lovell’s compact bridge sat in stu

“Dear God” was all the captain could muster as he stood, transfixed. On the screen was the image of the Lovell’s secondary hull, pushed away by the force of the explosive bolts responsible for separating it from the rest of the vessel. It had begun to tumble in response to other forces being inflicted upon it, and though the image offered no sound, it was not hard for Okagawa to imagine the shriek of twisted metal as strips and chunks of hull plating were ripped with stu